California’s state water board Tuesday placed the Tulare Lake Subbasin on a probationary status, a first-of-its-kind move that will impose fees and reporting requirements on those who take water from the area.
The California Department of Water Resources on Friday said its initial State Water Project allocation forecast is 10% of requested supplies for next year — a 5% increase from its December 2022 initial forecast.
Facing demands from the federal government, California water agencies offered today to cut back the amount of water they import from the Colorado River starting in 2023.
After months of negotiations, water agencies wrote to federal agencies today offering to reduce California’s water use by 400,000 acre-feet every year through 2026. That amounts to 9% of the river’s water that California is entitled to under its senior rights.
We all know we’re in the midst of a terrible drought in California.
And we all know we’ve got an 1,100-mile coastline.
Is desalination the answer to our problems?
No. It comes after water conservation and recycling, and is just one tool among many that might prevent the state from going dry.
Federal officials project more bad news for the drought-stressed Colorado River, which provides water to Las Vegas and much of the Southwest.
The Bureau of Reclamation issued a report last week saying there is a high likelihood over the next few years that California, the river’s largest water user, will join Nevada, Arizona, and Mexico in seeing cuts to its allocation.
Drought has long fueled tensions between growers, who depend on the water for irrigation, and the Klamath Tribes, who hold two protected fish species as sacred.
California’s big reservoirs are about half empty. We’re heading into another drought. But Sacramento’s vault is overflowing while Washington is pumping in more dollars. Here’s an idea: Spend some windfall money on no-brainer, quickie public works projects to help us confront the drought and prepare for an unstable climate future. Credit state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego). It’s her idea.
A proposal to create a watchdog for South Los Angeles County’s dozens of disjointed and struggling water systems has stirred fear among public agencies and companies further down the pipeline that they could be the target of hostile takeovers. AB 1195, introduced by Assemblywoman Christina Garcia, would establish the Southern Los Angeles County Regional Water Agency and grant it authority to assist failing water systems with aging infrastructure, or to take control if a system is no longer able to provide affordable, clean drinking water.
Proposed water wells in California don’t all require environmental review under state and local permit laws, but state standards governing well location will sometimes require local governments to make discretionary decisions, triggering such a look, a state appellate court said.
The California Environmental Quality Act requires discretionary decisions—those that require an agency to exercise judgment in deciding whether to approve a project—to undergo an environmental review. Ministerial decisions made to determine legal compliance, however, don’t require such weighing.
President Trump yesterday touted his repeal of key Clean Water Act regulations as more than three dozen current and former government officials called for an investigation into the scientific basis of his forthcoming replacement rule.
Trump told a gathering of the country’s farmers that last fall he repealed “one of the most ridiculous regulations of all,” the Obama administration’s Waters of the U.S., or WOTUS, rule, which defined which marshes, creeks and streams quality for federal protections.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
