The coronavirus sparked a lot of water-related questions and
issues when the pandemic moved into California in 2020.
Below are the latest articles on the topic as they appeared in
our Aquafornia news aggregate.
Legislation from Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, that would help
hundreds of thousands of Californians who have fallen behind on
their water bills and are at risk of being disconnected from
water service cleared a key committee on Wednesday.
… Sen. Dodd’s legislation comes as the State Water
Resources Control Board heard results of a survey that found
water debt in California climbed to about $1 billion. The
survey estimated 12% of California households are behind on
their water bills with an average debt of $500 per
household.
While most public water agencies are still mulling whether to
keep an online option for their meetings, some have already
clicked off Zoom and marched straight back to early 2020. The
Westlands Water District, which covers a huge swath of western
Fresno County, will no longer have a public online option for
the public to access its meetings starting June 15.
The Water Education Foundation has hosted successful virtual
tours and events during the COVID-19 pandemic and is now
closely monitoring developments – as capacity and distancing
restrictions are lifted from public health guidelines this
summer – to inform the format choices for our fall
programs.
The White House last week announced the official
launch of the Low-Income Household Water Assistance
Program (LIHWAP) housed at the U.S. Department of Health &
Human Services (HHS). This program is the first of its
kind designed to provide funding to help low-income households
affected by the COVID-19 pandemic pay their water and
wastewater bills. According to the National Association of
Clean Water Agencies (NACWA), the available federal funds,
which total $1.138 billion, were secured as part of
the federal COVID-19 relief spending in December 2020 and March
2021.
Governor Newsom’s recent emergency declaration confirms what
California’s agriculture industry has known for months. Drought
has returned to California, in what has become a recurring
theme of growing food in our state. Farmers and ranchers accept
the risks that come with their way of life and have fought hard
to be productive in one of the most heavily regulated
industries in the state. Agriculture continues to adapt to meet
evolving challenges and now more than ever consumers need to
buy California grown produce. -Written by Ian LeMay, president of the California
Fresh Fruit Association.
As pandemic restrictions begin to ease in California, a race is
on to get money in place to help with massive and growing
household water debt before the statewide moratorium on
shutoffs for non-payment is lifted. Some observers are looking
at June 15, when Gov. Newsom said he’ll lift the state’s mask
mandate, as a potential date for release from other COVID-19
mandates, including the water shutoff moratorium. That’s also
the deadline for lawmakers to pass the state budget, in which
Newsom recently injected $1 billion to help pay overdue water
bills.
Rural, low-income Latino communities across California were
hardest hit by the last drought and could see drinking water
shortages again this year as extreme drought spreads across the
state, according to a report released Thursday by non-partisan
advisors to California’s lawmakers. The report from the
Legislative Analyst’s Office warns state officials to prepare
by ramping up monitoring of wells in vulnerable communities and
lining up emergency drinking water supplies to send
there.
In a time of record-breaking unemployment as a result of the
COVID-19 pandemic, Californians owe an estimated $1 billion in
unpaid water utility bills. With reduced revenue, hundreds of
water utilities are at high risk of financial emergency. The
State Water Board estimates at least 1.6 million households
have an average of roughly $500 in water debt — a crisis that
could lead to a wave of families facing water shutoffs, liens
on their homes or other collection methods. … Data show
Black and Latino households are disproportionately
affected.
The pandemic and its economic fallout are affecting many
aspects of water management, while climate change has major
implications. And a much-needed national conversation about
racism has illuminated water equity issues—such as how we
address climate change, safe drinking water, and water
scarcity.
Tens of thousands of Bay Area residents financially impacted
during the COVID-19 crisis now face tens of millions of dollars
in unpaid water bills, prompting both long-term financial and
public health concerns. That’s the conclusion of a new a report
released Thursday by the non-profit public policy organization
SPUR, and that looming potential crisis has experts concerned
about vulnerable customers.
A broad coalition of organizations is urging Joe Biden and
Kamala Harris to mandate a national moratorium on water and
other utility shutoffs on day one in the White House, in order
to curtail the spread of Covid-19 and ease the financial burden
on struggling Americans. … Only eight states –
California, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Virginia,
Washington and Wisconsin – and the District of Columbia
currently have moratoriums in place, but even these don’t
include debt forgiveness programs.
Now that the calendar has flipped to January 2021, it’s time to
say goodbye to the mess of the past year, yes? … The
pandemic’s economic dislocation continues to reverberate among
those who lost work. Severe weather boosted by a warming
climate is leaving its mark in the watersheds of the Southwest
[including the Colorado River]. And President-elect Biden will
take office looking to undo much of his predecessor’s legacy of
environmental deregulation while also writing his own narrative
on issues of climate, infrastructure, and social
justice….Litigation over toxic PFAS compounds found in
rivers, lakes, and groundwater is already active. Lawsuits are
likely to continue at a brisk pace…
Sewage data analyzed in Silicon Valley wastewater treatment
plants confirms that the latest wave of coronavirus infections
is sharply worse than the ones in the spring and summer.
Officials in Santa Clara County have been routinely testing
solid waste samples in sewage to detect levels of the
coronavirus that causes COVID-19 as part of a project funded by
Stanford University.
In 2016 the City of San Jose became the first Bay Area
municipality to get credit for homeless encampment cleanups
under its stormwater permit. So far, the city has exceeded
the permit’s annual requirements, most recently removing 446
tons of rubbish—more than double its goal—from encampments
along waterways. But Covid-19 has complicated this effort.
San Diego is participating in a statewide program to monitor
its untreated wastewater for the virus that causes
COVID-19. City staff have been monitoring for severe acute
respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2, in untreated
wastewater at the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant this
month. Following the test run, staff will monitor for
SARS-CoV-2 three times a week from January through June 2021.
In the midst of drought yet again, and two decades into the
21st century, California continues to operate with a water
infrastructure engineered and constructed for 20th century
climate conditions and populations. That’s true not only of the
state’s physical network of dams and aqueducts, but of its
legal and financial infrastructure as well — the pricing rules
that allocate the state’s precious liquid resources among its
40 million thirsty people. The coronavirus emergency has
highlighted some of the most serious stresses in the system.
In the midst of the pandemic and recession, the cost of
delivering safe drinking water continues to rise across
California, creating a crisis of affordability for water users
and a revenue problem for water suppliers. PPIC talked
to Robert Shaver—board chair for the California Urban
Water Agencies (CUWA) and general manager of the Alameda County
Water District—about how the state’s largest public water
agencies are thinking about this issue.
The Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies joined five
other water and wastewater sector organizations last week in
requesting the inclusion of targeted water sector programs in
any COVID-19 relief package that is formulated before the end
of the year.
UC San Diego says it detected traces of the novel coronavirus
in five areas of campus over the weekend after it greatly
expanded its search for the pathogen in wastewater samples
drawn from dozens of buildings.
California regulators sent a survey on Monday to 150 of the
state’s largest water providers in an attempt to shed light on
the financial fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. The State
Water Resources Control Board wants to know how economic
slowdowns related to the virus have affected utility finances
and, at a household level, how many residents have overdue
water bills.
