In California and across the country, household water rates have been rising as utilities invest to upgrade aging infrastructure, secure future supplies and meet treatment standards for clean drinking water. As monthly water bills continue to increase, growing numbers of customers have been struggling to pay.
Residents in east San Diego County will get purified water flowing from their faucets starting in 2026. Construction to build the East County Advanced Water Purification Program is “well underway,” according to Mark Niemiec, the program’s director. The program aims to use state-of-the-art technology to purify recycled water in East County and transform it into clean and safe drinking water.
Years ago, in a moment of despair over the utter dead-end that solving the Tijuana River sewage crisis seemed to be, I asked U.S. officials why we don’t just cross the border and start fixing broken pipes in Mexico.
The construction of new recycled water pipelines in North County is expected to begin next week, according to the Olivenhain Municipal Water District. Thanks in part to about $900,000 in grants from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the California Department of Water Resources, the district will begin work on extending several underground pipelines in Encinitas and Carlsbad.
Vallecitos Water District, led by General Manager James Gumpel, has been serving the San Marcos community since 1955. As a local government entity, they provide essential water, wastewater, and reclamation services to various areas in North San Diego County.
Cyber criminals affiliated with Iran and China are targeting critical water sector infrastructure in the United States. In a letter to governors, the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, Michael Regan, and the president’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, said disabling cyberattacks are striking water and wastewater systems throughout the United States.
The Del Mar City Council voted Feb. 20 to proceed with a public noticing period for potable water and wastewater rates increases that, pending approval by the City Council, would take effect July 1.
The residents of the 40 floors of San Francisco apartments above our heads may live in luxury, but really, they’re just like the rest of us: showering, washing their hands, doing laundry. Normally in the US, all their water would flush out to a treatment facility, and eventually out to a body of water.
California regulators approved new rules last month to enable water suppliers to treat wastewater and redistribute it as drinking water. The state says that the new standards, which took years to craft, are the most advanced in the nation for treating wastewater and will add millions of gallons of additional drinking water to state supplies.
In late November, an Iranian-backed hacking group attacked Israeli-made digital controls commonly used in the water and wastewater industries in the US, affecting multiple organizations across several states.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
