As crews have fought the fast-spreading fires across the Los Angeles area, they have repeatedly been hampered by low water pressure and fire hydrants that have gone dry. These problems have exposed what experts say are vulnerabilities in city water supply systems not built for wildfires on this scale.
Almost 1 million residents from 632 neighborhoods throughout Tijuana and Rosarito will be without water service through the weekend starting Friday.
Jesús García Castro, director of the State Commission of Public Services in Tijuana, says crews need to repair a large leak on one of the main lines that delivers water to the entire region.
Even in San Diego, it’s typical to get some rain in the winter. Except this year, the San Diego County Water Authority said it’s the third driest start to the rainy season in 150 years.
Maybe we ought to change the name Valley Center to “Shut-off City!”
Besides one holiday shut-down greeting from SDG&E three weeks ago and another post-New Year kick in the teeth this week, add a 10-day water shutdown by the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) that began December 7—to be followed two months later by another shut-down.
An unusual idea floated by the president of the Utah State Senate to get more shares of Colorado River water is intriguing California water officials.
In an interview with FOX 13 News in May, Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, proposed a novel idea: “We actually build desalination plants in California and trade them for the Colorado River water.”
Atlanta remains under a state of emergency Monday as it battles disruptions to its water service that began last week, leaving a swath of a major city under boil-water advisories and highlighting the pervasiveness of problems caused by America’s aging infrastructure.
“We are currently coordinating with the US Army Corps of Engineers. We have sought their assistance because they have the most experience in handling a crisis like this,” Mayor Andre Dickens announced in a statement Monday. “They will help us develop a plan to assess and evaluate our aging infrastructure.”
J.F. Shea Construction, Inc., was given the San Diego County Water Authority contract to reline Pipeline 5 in San Luis Rey Canyon.
The SDCWA board voted unanimously May 23 to award J.F. Shea a $47,913,795 contract for the work. The project will reline approximately 9,000 linear feet of existing 96-inch diameter pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe.
A three-year construction project on San Diego’s oldest aqueduct is underway, with the San Diego County Water Authority leading the $66 million effort to upgrade the infrastructure. Work on the project, known as the Southern First Aqueduct Facilities Improvement Project, is slated to run through summer 2026 and is intended to retrofit 99 structures connected to two water pipelines.
A series of water main breaks in Atlanta caused widespread disruption on Saturday, as outages and severely reduced water pressure forced some businesses to close and infuriated residents who criticized city officials for failing to provide timely updates.
The Biden administration on Tuesday announced it would invest $99 million in taxpayer funds to support the creation of the world’s largest water recycling center, a project aimed in part at easing California’s reliance on the drought-stricken Colorado River.
