An innovative process that uses naturally occurring bacteria to remove nitrate from contaminated groundwater has received approval from California’s State Water Board as a treatment method.
The validation stems from a recent pilot study of the Hall BioProcess™ by MIH Water Treatment, Inc. and the San Antonio Water Company in Upland, California.
A rapid-fire review of potential fixes to the Friant-Kern Canal favors building a replacement canal for 20 miles alongside the existing canal where land subsidence has caused it to sag, severely restricting water flow, according to final environmental documents released Friday.
Five wells punch the scorching Nevada desert.
Water in this area is locked underneath the ground. It flows silently and invisibly as part of an aquifer stretching roughly 50,000 square-miles. Much of this water collected here thousands of years ago when lakes covered most of Nevada. Now wells are summoning it for human use. The problem is there’s not enough to go around.
At the center of this tension are the five wells.
A housing developer, Coyote Springs Investment, owns four wells, planted to one day pump water for a sprawling new community in the desert, filling the highway stretch about 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The remaining well belongs to the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt writes that a “Grand Bargain” in California water is needed to end the “political culture of deferral” and allow major water projects to advance. On the contrary, what’s needed is an adult regulator that will make hard choices that water users refuse to make.
For at least five years, the state and various water users have postponed balancing the state’s water budget by promising a grand bargain. This promised new grand bargain is not the solution to the aptly named “culture of deferral.” The grand bargain is the current center of deferral.
San Diego is not well endowed with many freshwater sources to support its growing population, so some water experts are perplexed the city’s ignoring a self-replenishing local groundwater source that, though small in size, is safe from the threat of natural disasters and reliably recharged by the San Diego River.
The City of Anaheim, California, has enlisted Brown and Caldwell to provide owner advisory services for the design-build delivery of multiple groundwater treatment plants. The new facilities will play a key role in Anaheim’s compliance with recent state Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances regulations and ensure water supplies continue to meet state and federal quality standards.
The big kahuna of California water — Metropolitan Water District of Southern California — has stopped taking supplies from one Kern County groundwater bank because the water is heavily tainted with a cancer-causing agent that is pervasive in Central Valley’s aquifers. While only one banking program has been affected so far, the emergence of this issue could have huge implications for water storage and movement in the Central Valley.
Residents of Fairmead, California worry they are on the brink of losing water service, as the town’s only community well shows signs it may fail before a new one can be built.
After years of planning, the Madera County Board of Supervisors on Aug. 11 approved an engineering contract to design and manage upgrades to the system, including a new well to serve more than 500 people connected to the community water system.
Under California law, everyone in the state has a right to clean and affordable drinking water. But many disadvantaged communities still rely on contaminated water – either from private wells or public water sources. “Our groundwater in the Central Valley in California has been highly polluted … and it’s running through old and dilapidated infrastructure getting to people’s taps,” says Susana De Anda, co-founder of the Community Water Center, an environmental justice organization.
On New Year’s Day in 2018, Paul Kehmeier and his father drove up Grand Mesa until they got to the county line, 10,000 feet above sea level. Instead of the three to five feet of snow that should have been on the ground, there wasn’t enough of a dusting to even cover the grass.
The men marveled at the sight, and Kehmeier snapped a photo of his dad, “standing on the bare pavement, next to bare ground.”
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
