One of Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte’s most famous paintings depicts a tobacco pipe with cursive script below it reading, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” which translated from French means, “This is not a pipe.”
Four candidates are vying for two seats on the Imperial Irrigation District’s five-member board of directors on Nov. 3. The election will be the culmination of contentious races that already eliminated one incumbent in the primary.
The Imperial County Air Pollution Control District issued Notices of Violation to California Department of Water Resources, California Natural Resources Agency, and United States Fish and Wildlife Service for failure to implement adequate dust control on the Salton Sea playa on the Species Conservation Habitat project site near Westmorland, California.
In addition, as landowners of the project site, the Imperial Irrigation District and United States Bureau of Land Management were also issued NOVs, according to a press release.
Imperial County Supervisor Ryan Kelley wants the board to work with Congressman Juan Vargas, D-Chula Vista, and the county’s lobbyists in Washington, D.C., to draft a legislation to fully fund a wastewater treatment project to clean the New River.
The Imperial County Board of Supervisors approved a conditional use permit (CPU) and the adoption of a mitigated negative declaration for the Valencia 3 Solar Project Tuesday, October 6, allowing the project to move forward.
The Coachella Valley Water District broke ground Tuesday on a project that will connect the Westside Elementary School in Thermal to the water system that services much of the valley. Westside is the only school in its district relying solely on a well and has a history of water contamination.
Access to water, and water rights in general, are critical to life in the Desert Southwest. That’s why two candidates for the Imperial Irrigation District Area 2, which includes El Centro and western Imperial County, say they take that mission very seriously.
Who owns the water from the Colorado River that comes into the Imperial Valley?
It’s a question that divided the Imperial Irrigation District Division 2 runoff candidates in a forum hosted by the San Diego State University-Imperial Valley Borderlands Institute on Sept 26.
For the West this summer, the news about water was grim. In some parts of California, it didn’t rain for over 100 days. In western Colorado, the ground was so dry that runoff at first evaporated into the air. And in New Mexico and Nevada, the rains never came.
Bill Hasencamp is the manager of California’s Metropolitan Water District, which provides treated water to 19 million people. What was most unfortunate, he said, was that, “the upper Colorado Basin had a 100% snowpack, yet runoff was only 54% of normal.” In 2018, a variation happened — light snow and little runoff, which doesn’t bode well for the future.
The years-long fight between the Imperial Irrigation District and farmer Michael Abatti over control of Colorado River water could be nearing its grand finale in the California Supreme Court. After Abatti requested last month that the state’s highest judicial body take up his case, the water district filed its opposition on Monday.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
