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Scripps’ New Program Forecast Imperial Beach Flooding, Helped City Brace For Impact

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Joshua Emerson Smith

Massive waves crushed the Imperial Beach shoreline at dawn Friday, flooding sections of Seacoast Drive all the way to the Tijuana River Estuary. Many residents boarded up windows and put out sandbags in preparation for the 15-foot waves that covered the entire beach during high tide, inundating streets and garages. However, the city would’ve been caught off guard had it not been for an experimental warning system launched just months ago by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

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‘A Crisis Of Sewage’: California Lawmakers Seek Funding For The Polluted New River

/in , /by /The Arizona Republic (Phoenix)by Ian James

For decades, the New River has flowed north across the U.S.-Mexico border carrying toxic pollution and the stench of sewage. Now lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento are pursuing new legislation and funding to combat the pollution problems. Rep. Juan Vargas introduced a bill in Congress last week that would direct the Environmental Protection Agency to create a program focused on helping to coordinate funding for the restoration and protection of the New River.

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OPINION: Newsom’s Picks For Environmental Protection And Water Chiefs Will Reveal His Priorities

/in , , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Richard M. Frank

One of the keys to former Gov. Jerry Brown’s success as California’s chief executive over the past eight years was the stellar group of individuals he recruited as his top environmental and water officials. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s initial, senior environmental appointments suggest that he is wisely following in Brown’s footsteps. Californians can only hope his water leadership team turns out to be equally strong. Newsom’s first two environmental appointments are his most important, and his choices are impressive indeed.

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Scientists Are Using Bacteria To Remove Harmful Contaminants From Our Water. Here’s How.

/in , /by /Environmental Health Newsby Hannah Thomasy

John Coates’ laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, hums with activity. Negative 80-degree freezers whirr, liquid nitrogen bubbles, grad students meticulously measure and mix complicated concoctions. But all of this is nothing compared with the commotion going on at a microscopic level.  The Coates lab is growing many different kinds of bacteria, multiplying in petri dishes at mind-boggling rates. But these bacteria aren’t out to harm people or animals. In fact, quite the opposite — they’re hard at work breaking down a dangerous chemical that pollutes waterways across the United States.

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Tiny Community Has Tried For 20 Years To Force Southern California Edison To Fix Water System

/in , /by /The Desert Sun (Palm Springs)by Janet Wilson

Retired firefighters Julie and Dale Hutchinson stepped out the back door of their Banning Heights home on a hot night last July. A column of smoke and flames towered over the ridge above their home — the Valley fire was advancing toward their tiny community. Their first thought wasn’t the wildfire, it was lack of water. For two decades, the Hutchinsons and their neighbors in this rural enclave tucked above the I-10 freeway have fought to have Southern California Edison repair a century-old system that carries water down the San Gorgonio mountains to their homes.

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Environment Report: Big Northern California Water Deals Will Trickle Down to San Diego

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

In this week’s Environment Report, let’s focus on an issue that doesn’t always get much attention in Southern California: the rivers of Northern California. Every so often, people get together and divide a river. That’s been happening a lot lately in the final throes of Gov. Jerry Brown’s term. State and federal water officials have worked furiously to redo how we all share the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers and their numerous tributaries. At stake for cities and farms is how much water will be available and at what price. At stake for fish is their very existence.

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OPINION: Peace In California’s Water Wars Is Within Grasp

/in , /by /CALmatters (Sacramento)by Jeffrey Mount and Ellen Hanak

Dare we say it? The outlines of a truce in California’s unending water battles began to come into focus last week, though not everyone is willing to sign the treaty. The State Water Board adopted the first phase of a far-reaching revision to the Water Quality Control Plan for the Sacramento‒San Joaquin Delta and its watershed. This first phase, which has been many years in the making, focuses on the San Joaquin River and its tributaries, and would allocate a greater share of water to the environment.

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City’s Big Lead Revelation Doesn’t Seem To Be Impacting Schools

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

When schools officials began to find lead in drinking water at several San Diego schools in 2016, parents from across the region scrambled to understand the danger posed to their children by the toxic metal. At the time, we thought the lead was coming from inside schools because the city of San Diego sounded certain that its pipes were no longer made of lead. But it turns out, as we reported last week along with NBC San Diego, the city does not know what 192,000 of its water pipes are made of. Nor does it know what 16,000 pipe fittings are made of.

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California Unveils $1.7 Billion Plan For Rivers, Fish. Will It Ward Off A Water War?

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Ryan Sabalow and Dale Kasler

Hoping to head off one of the biggest California water wars in decades, state officials Wednesday proposed a sweeping, $1.7 billion plan to prop up struggling fish populations across many of the state’s most important rivers. Capping 30 days of feverish negotiations, the Department of Water Resources and the Department of Fish and Wildlife unveiled a dramatic plan that would reallocate more than 700,000 acre-feet of water from farms and cities throughout much of the Central Valley, leaving more water in the rivers and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to support ailing steelhead and Chinook salmon populations.

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OPINION: We’d Prefer a Deal. But We’ll Fight to Protect our Rivers if That’s What it Takes

/in , /by /The Modesto Bee

Five appointed state regulators can do an enormous amount to help salmon and the state’s most-altered water system on Dec. 12. Or they can guarantee that water lawyers will stay busy for decades to come. The State Water Resources Control Board’s five members – including one added Thursday – are scheduled to vote on implementing the Bay-Delta Plan’s Substitute Environmental Document. If unchanged, the SED will require 40 to 50 percent of the Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Merced rivers to flow unimpaired to the Delta, for the sake of salmon. It would also require vast amounts of water be left in cold storage behind the region’s three dams to help salmon in an ever-warming environment.

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