A U.S. District Court judge has denied a motion from the
federal government to reconsider a ruling on the Agua Caliente
Band of Cahuilla Indians’ lawsuit against two Coachella Valley
water agencies.
The Goleta Water District has updated its recycled water
permitting so it can now sell to agricultural customers,
although not many of them are interested in buying.
The story behind a proposal to pump water from under the Mojave
Desert in San Bernardino County is a long and complicated one.
Since its approval in 2012, the Cadiz Valley Water
Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project has been tied up in
litigation from environmental groups, fought over in the state
legislature and faced hurdles by state and federal government
officials.
Irvine Lake looks a lot different today than it did a year ago.
Last September the reservoir looked like a giant puddle at 13
percent of capacity, today, after a rainy winter, the water
covers the area and is ready to greet the public on Saturday,
Aug. 17. After a 3-year hiatus, Irvine Lake is reopening for
shoreline fishing on Aug. 17.
Desalination began to lose its urgency among Californians and
their public officials two years ago, after the drought-busting
winter of 2016-17, when heavy rain and snow ended dry
conditions in most of the state. The idea of drawing potable
water from the sea became even less of a priority this year,
when an autumn of record-level fires gave way to one of the
state’s wettest winters on record.
Hydrogen sulfide is associated with the natural processes
occurring in the Salton Sea, a non-draining body of water with
no ability to cleanse itself. Trapped in its waters are salt
and selenium-laden agricultural runoff from surrounding farms,
as well as heavy metals and bacterial pollution that flow in
from Mexico’s New River, authorities said.
Los Angeles city and county representatives hosted a discussion
with state officials to address ways to increase local water
supplies and to support a proposed statewide water system. Los
Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was joined Friday by the California
Secretary of Natural Resources, Wade Crowfoot, and Secretary of
Environmental Protection, Jared Blumenfeld, to discuss the
city’s maintenance of its water sources.
In a region that has already seen two 20-year droughts, the San
Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District continues to invest
in water supplies to help the region sustain prolonged
droughts. A new program offered by Valley District provides
financial incentive to local water agencies for projects that
produce recycled water or capture storm water.
San Diego County’s eroding coastline is causing significant
public safety, financial and political challenges. … But
those shoreline changes seem certain to become more serious and
frequent because of sea-level rise, yet the public at large
does not seem ready to make some hard decisions regarding
existing and future development along the coast.
Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will be required to take less water
from the Colorado River for the first time next year under a
set of agreements that aim to keep enough water in Lake Mead to
reduce the risk of a crash.
The City Council is split on how much to raise water rates over
the next five years to fund projects that will wean Santa
Monica off of imported water. … Bi-monthly water and
wastewater bills for single-family homes would increase by $23
on average under the lower rate structure and $36 under the
higher rate structure.
In June, Kathy Joseph learned that the fungicide she has been
spraying on her grapes for decades could be drifting onto the
cannabis. Unlike food crops, cannabis can’t be sold if there’s
any trace of fungicide or pesticide in it, according to state
law. So while the county investigates, she’s using a more
expensive and far less effective spray on the grapevines that
are nearest to the cannabis farm.
On Tuesday, groups submitted a letter to California’s key
resource agencies responsible for preserving and managing the
state’s natural resources, urging the agencies to protect
drinking water and safeguard public health from the pending
request for exemption from federal safe drinking water rules in
the Cat Canyon Oil Field in Santa Barbara County.
The twin earthquakes that rattled Southern California last
month caused up to $5.2 billion in damages to the China Lake
Navy base, according to estimates in a report released
Wednesday by the base. The report cites extensive damage among
the nearly 3,600 facilities at the base, including 1,341
buildings, as well was infrastructure like water supplies and
power.
It was happy hour at the “Frog Shack,” a tiny building at the
Los Angeles Zoo offering all the amenities that Southern
California’s rarest — and perhaps fussiest — amphibians might
need to survive. … This is where Ian Recchio, the zoo’s
curator of reptiles and amphibians, is performing what some
call miracle work in keeping alive a federally endangered
species, one of the rarest vertebrates on Earth.
In light of the recent groundwater modeling scenarios generated
by Indian Wells Valley Water Groundwater, some stakeholders in
the basin have pushed back, including Searles Valley Minerals
and Meadowbrook Dairy.
The Carpinteria Valley Water District is in the process of
forming a groundwater sustainability agency for Carpinteria
Groundwater Basin in partnership with the city of Carpinteria,
Santa Barbara County and Ventura County.
Some areas of the country are predicted to see increased
flooding from hurricanes and other storms, while climate models
show the West, particularly California, will be getting dryer.
This will especially affect the water supply in California and
here locally in the Santa Clarita Valley, where we have long
depended on water from the melting Sierra snowpack to get us
through our hot, dry summers.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Thursday will release its
projections for next year’s supply from Lake Mead, a key
reservoir that feeds Colorado River water to Nevada, Arizona,
California and Mexico. After a wet winter, the agency is not
expected to require any states to take cuts to their share of
water. But that doesn’t mean conditions are improving long
term.
In the past, California city planners have been largely
reactive, reconstructing boardwalks lashed by winter storms.
Now, with the long-term outlook for the coast coming into
focus, the California Coastal Commission is urging communities
from San Diego to Humboldt counties to revise their local
coastal programs to take comprehensive adaptive approaches…
