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Environment Report: County Penalized for Sewage Spill Into Local River

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

San Diego County has agreed to pay nearly $700,000 for a pipeline rupture that dumped raw sewage into a San Diego River tributary. The spill sent about 760,000 gallons of sewage into Los Coches Creek in February and March 2017, violating the federal Clean Water Act, among other state and federal rules. Those rules allowed the Regional Water Quality Control Board to penalize the county up to $7.8 million, but instead the county and regulators agreed to settle. The resulting fines amount to less than 90 cents per gallon of the spilled sewage.

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City Won’t Say How $3B Pure Water Project Will Affect Customers’ Bills

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

San Diego is in the midst of spending roughly $3 billion on a massive new water treatment system, but city officials can’t or won’t tell customers how that will affect their water bills. New water recycling plants will eventually purify enough sewage to provide a third of the city’s drinking water. In November, the City Council approved the first, $1.4 billion phase of the project. Water bills will rise, that much is certain. Yet, officials in Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s administration are refusing to estimate by how much.

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It Can Be Hard To Tell Where The Water Authority Ends And A Powerful Law Firm Begins

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

Over the past two decades, the San Diego County Water Authority has paid $25 million to a single law firm. The firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, is known for its water law practice across the West. Locally, though, few people know of its influence.

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Environment Report: Big Northern California Water Deals Will Trickle Down to San Diego

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

In this week’s Environment Report, let’s focus on an issue that doesn’t always get much attention in Southern California: the rivers of Northern California. Every so often, people get together and divide a river. That’s been happening a lot lately in the final throes of Gov. Jerry Brown’s term. State and federal water officials have worked furiously to redo how we all share the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers and their numerous tributaries. At stake for cities and farms is how much water will be available and at what price. At stake for fish is their very existence.

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Arbitrator Admonishes Water Authority After It Sued Five Tribes

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

The San Diego County Water Authority tried to interfere with the delivery of water to five local Indian tribes based on illegal actions and illogical arguments, a former federal judge has ruled. Last year, five San Diego Indian tribes got back the rights to water taken from them a century ago. In response, the San Diego County Water Authority this spring blamed the tribes for cutting into its bottom line and sued them for $2 million.

 

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Water Department Refunds Over Billing Errors Have Skyrocketed

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

Over the past year, San Diego’s water department refunded over $650,000 to hundreds of customers who received unjustifiably high water bills. The payouts are another sign of how water customers were affected by bad bills from the city. Over 1,100 customers received refunds this year, meaning the city overcharged the average customer by more than $500. The number and cost of refunds has dramatically risen in recent years, according to department records analyzed by Voice of San Diego and NBC 7 Responds as part of an ongoing investigation into the water department’s billing practices.

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City’s Dispute With SDG&E Could Add $48M to the Cost of Pure Water Project

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

In recent months, the city and San Diego Gas & Electric have tussled over the future of energy in San Diego. Now, they’re in a multimillion-dollar dispute over the largest local water project in modern history. The city is working on a $1.4 billion water recycling project, known as a Pure Water. A new water treatment plant will eventually purify enough sewage to provide a third of the city’s drinking water. To build the plant and connect it to the rest of the city’s water system, the city must move some of SDG&E’s equipment.

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City’s Big Lead Revelation Doesn’t Seem To Be Impacting Schools

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

When schools officials began to find lead in drinking water at several San Diego schools in 2016, parents from across the region scrambled to understand the danger posed to their children by the toxic metal. At the time, we thought the lead was coming from inside schools because the city of San Diego sounded certain that its pipes were no longer made of lead. But it turns out, as we reported last week along with NBC San Diego, the city does not know what 192,000 of its water pipes are made of. Nor does it know what 16,000 pipe fittings are made of.

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SDG&E Is Looking To Leave The Power-Buying Business

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Ry Rivard

In a dramatic sign of California’s changing energy market, San Diego Gas & Electric wants to stop buying and selling electricity. In recent days, the company has asked lawmakers to introduce legislation that would let SDG&E reduce its role – while also pushing the state to enter the energy market in a big way. The company’s vision could eventually require the state to buy out its long-term power contracts and possibly pay the company for several natural gas-fired power plants it owns. SDG&E is pitching this idea as the company prepares to lose about half of its power customers within the next few years.

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San Diego Has The Ingredients For An Explosive Fire

/in , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Diana Leonard

Fire weather arrived in San Diego this weekend, traveling southward from Butte County via Ventura and Los Angeles. Its journey here gave us snapshots of a grim new reality: the unbelievable speed and scale of California wildfires. A line of burned-out cars in the Sierra foothill town of Paradise, and social media accounts of desperate attempts to outrun the Camp Fire. Four one-way lanes on the Pacific Coast Highway during a mass evacuation of Malibu to escape the Woolsey Fire.

 

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