Carlsbad has decided to proceed with a feasibility study of whether it should build a solar power farm on 30 to 40 acres in a rarely visited corner of the city.
The site is at the city’s Maerkle Reservoir, near the border of Oceanside and Vista, where Carlsbad owns about 100 acres including the 17-acre reservoir topped by a floating fabric cover.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has awarded Oceanside $15 million to further programs that reduce the city’s reliance on imported water and increase the use of recycled and brackish groundwater sources.
Oceanside is one of San Diego County’s leaders in the use of purified wastewater, which is injected into the underground water table and later removed along with the brackish groundwater and filtered for use in the local drinking water supply.
Oceanside residents will soon see a double-digit increase over the next two years after two years of no increase to their rates at all.
“Anytime we see something like this come forward, especially when cost-of-living generally is going up across-the-board and people are really struggling to make ends meet, this is considered very heavily,” Councilmember Eric Joyce said.
Councilmembers unanimously approved the new rates Wednesday.
Oceanside declared a local emergency this week in hopes of getting state and possibly federal money to cover the repair costs for sinkholes, landslides, flooding and a sewage spill caused by the recent series of storms.
The City of Oceanside won an Award of Excellence for its recycled water outreach and education program on its water purification project, called Pure Water Oceanside, at the recent WateReuse California annual conference.
The award recognizes the city’s community outreach on the benefits of water reuse and its furthering of water recycling through its Pure Water Oceanside project.
The project, billed as the first fully operational indirect potable reuse project in San Diego County, is expected to provide about a third of Oceanside’s water supply.
Large clusters of tarballs were found along beaches in Oceanside and Carlsbad, San Diego County officials said Thursday, with similar reports being made in Encinitas and Del Mar.
The black balls of tar, about the size of a quarter, are suspected to have come from the massive oil spill off the coast of Orange County, where a ruptured pipeline has spewed more than 144,000 gallons of crude oil into the ocean.
The City of Oceanside is being awarded $1.06 million for its planned Well Expansion and Brine Minimization Project from the Federal Bureau of Reclamation under the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act Desalination Program.
The Secretary of the Interior will be recommending a $1.7 million grant award for construction of the Pure Water Oceanside project, it was announced Friday.
The funding will be awarded via the Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART: Title XVI WIIN Water Reclamation and Reuse Projects funding opportunity. Oceanside is one of 11 applicants named in the federal appropriations process for this funding.
“We are excited to continue working with the Bureau of Reclamation on Pure Water Oceanside,” said Cari Dale, Oceanside’s water utilities director. “Their continued support along with multiple grant, loan and incentive programs through the EPA, the Department of Water Resources as well as Metropolitan Water District and the San Diego County Water Authority continue to make local water supply development affordable for the city of Oceanside customers.”
The city of Oceanside took first place in this year’s Wyland National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation, earning the title of most waterwise among similarly sized cities across the country.
In total, Oceanside residents and businesses saved 32,945 gallons of water, collected more than 10,000 pounds of debris headed for local rivers and the ocean and reduced carbon emissions by 137 pounds during Earth Month in April.
During the annual competition, mayors around the country encourage their communities to conserve water, reduce carbon emissions and reduce waste.
Oceanside released an immersive 360-degree video and tour of the San Luis Rey Water Reclamation Facility, and new home of Pure Water Oceanside which is set to go online in 2022.
The video was released as part of “Water Awareness Month” and is a step-by-step tour of the water purification process, with a unique 360-view of the facility.
By turning your phone, you can see a view of the plant from all directions while hearing a narration of the process.
