The City of San Diego Public Utilities Department’s wastewater monitoring of coronavirus has received recognition from two state agencies.
The City’s Public Utilities Department was one of five California utilities participating in the Center for Disease Control’s National Wastewater Surveillance System program in cooperation with the State Water Quality Control Board.
Just to be safe, Noemí Vázquez keeps inhalers in almost every room of her house. She stashes them in her kitchen cupboard, a couple in her purse, one in the bathroom, and, of course, by her bedside.
And then there’s the large, black Puma knapsack where she keeps her nebulizer, several inhalers, and the montelukast pills she takes to treat her wheezing. Her four-year-old granddaughter has her own asthma kit – a neon pink and purple Trolls-themed lunch box that holds a small, child-sized nebulizer and a few inhalers. “She’s smart! She knows: this is her bag,” Vázquez said.
More than half of the continental US is currently experiencing some level of drought, and about a quarter is in severe drought or worse. In recent years, the western and southwestern US has been in a seemingly continual state of reduced rainfall and snowpack. Droughts have many well-known, potentially catastrophic consequences, from crop failures to water shortages to wildfires. Yet they can also have more direct human health impacts by not only affecting how much water there is, but also the quality of that water.
In many ways, California has stepped up in its commitments to the Salton Sea as tens of millions of dollars have flowed toward restoration efforts for smaller-scale projects planned over the next 10 years. Those projects will largely address potentially hazardous conditions to human and animal life brought on by exposed seabed and loss of bird habitat from ever-shrinking inflows of water.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to declare pollution at the Tijuana River Valley a public health crisis.
Supervisor Nora Vargas said the action is needed because of the decades-long contamination of River Valley, which has resulted in environmental and health damage. According to the county, the region has long suffered from poor air quality, sewage leaks, waste from industrial plants, tire waste, plastic pollution, sediment, and trash.
Construction began this week on a 4,110-acre wetlands project on the Salton Sea’s playa near the mouth of the highly polluted New River, the California Department of Natural Resources announced Wednesday.
These days, the house where Donna and John Winters planned to retire in the Southern California desert reflects in a stagnant pool of blood red water, their dream home becoming something of a nightmare.
President Donald Trump on Sunday signed a roughly $900 billion stimulus package meant to tackle both COVID-19 relief as well as federal spending. Tucked in the 5,593-page-long law, courtesy of Southern California Democrats, are provisions that hold the potential to unlock millions of dollars of new federal spending to address the Salton Sea.
The bill notably modifies the Water Resources Development Act by authorizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to expedite a study on the feasibility of constructing a perimeter lake around the Salton Sea. It’s one of the large-scale plans floated to address the lake’s woes, and this move could speed up the process.
The law also includes more than $150 million for the Army Corps to carry out such studies on water issues at the Salton Sea and elsewhere.
Southern California Democrats Rep. Raul Ruiz and Rep. Juan Vargas introduced a new bill on Thursday that would force the federal government to take a more active role in funding and managing Salton Sea habitat restoration and dust suppression.
HR 8775, the Salton Sea Public Health and Environmental Protection Act, would create an interagency working group called the Salton Sea Management Council to coordinate projects around the lake’s receding shoreline.
In the weeks before the coronavirus began tearing through California, the city of Commerce made an expensive decision: It shut down part of its water supply.
Like nearly 150 other public water systems in California, the small city on the outskirts of Los Angeles had detected “forever chemicals” in its well water.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
