As you walk along the Tijuana River Valley, it’s hard not to smell the pungent smell of sewage, effluent flowing its way down the valley toward the Pacific Ocean.
It’s been a problem for decades as Tijuana’s sewage infrastructure has failed to keep up with a city that seemingly grew to two million residents overnight. The system constantly spews untreated raw sewage that eventually makes its way north of the border.
Crews building San Diego’s Pure Water sewage recycling system continue to pass major milestones, including finishing key stretches of pipeline across the city, tunneling work under Interstate 805 and breaking ground on treatment plants.
But they’ve also been faced with some major hurdles and setbacks, including delays caused by lingering supply chain issues and a two-year-old flooding problem on Morena Boulevard that still hasn’t been fully solved.
Desalination facilities have critics who claim it’s too expensive and environmentally destructive, but there are supporters who want to make existing reverse osmosis technology better and many new ideas are being tested here in Southern California.
Despite an unusually wet season last year and predictions for a boisterous rainy season this year, California continues to struggle to store enough water to meet the needs of its population and farms. We’ve experienced two particularly grueling droughts in the last decade, with state officials repeatedly blaming climate change for the challenges.
A bipartisan congressional delegation led by California Democrat Senator Alex Padilla and Republican Representative Doug LaMalfa on Tuesday sent a letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers urging them to prioritize “critical emergency repairs” to levees in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds.
The San Diego County Water Authority will begin aqueduct maintenance next spring, with the $66 million project expected to be complete in summer 2026. The project area will include pipelines that run through Rancho Bernardo and Poway.
The Southern First Aqueduct Facilities Improvement Project will focus on 99 aqueduct support structures in streets, along access roads and within utility easements. There are two 48-inch- and 54-inch-diameter critical regional pipelines involved, officials said.
The plan is for one pipeline to be taken offline at a time, according to engineering manager Brent Fountain, who spoke at the Rancho Bernardo Planning Board’s Oct. 19 meeting. The project is “very proactive” because it will be replacing some of the concrete vault structures and doing other infrastructure work to components, such as air vents and pump wells, before it becomes absolutely necessary, Fountain said.
Riverside County and Salton Sea officials held a public event Oct. 19 in North Shore to mark reaching a significant milestone in the development of the future North Lake Pilot Demonstration Project.
The event was held at the North Shore Beach & Yacht Club Community Center, 99-155 Sea View Drive. The yacht club overlooks the project’s future site along Riverside County’s northern shore of the Salton Sea.
San Diego is accelerating efforts to shore up the city’s aging dams, including moving up construction of the new Lake Hodges Dam from 2031 to 2029 and committing to comprehensively evaluating the eight other city dams by 2028.
Residents in the Ashley Falls neighborhood were surprised last month when all of the landscaping in the water quality project in their community was removed, leaving behind an expensive dirt hole with cut-back weeds. After sounding an alarm to the city, the area’s vegetation will be restored.
After three years of construction, water officials announced on Monday, Oct. 23, the completion of the first stage of a groundwater storage project they say will “significantly increase Southern California’s water supply in the face of a rapidly changing climate.”
