… The ample gurgling water, the rare outpouring of a
super-rainy winter, has turned a rural corner of Los Angeles
into a popular — and unauthorized — recreational spot this
summer. People lugging canopies, lawn chairs and barbecues are
converging on a stretch of the wash accessible mainly through a
private road. Along the way, they are blocking the narrow
street, illegally parking and leaving behind piles of trash and
waste. Residents in the adjacent Riverwood Ranch, a gated,
37-home enclave, are fed up and are calling for a city
crackdown on scofflaw visitors. Police have begun ticketing.
And although a recent cleanup removed some debris, officials
can’t keep up with the crowds. Signs posted on July 10 warned
that the area is not for recreational use and violators will be
cited for illegal parking. Most of the city’s “no stopping any
time” street signs and “no trespassing” placards have been
knocked down or tagged with spray paint. No dumping signs are
ignored.
The Cuyama Valley north of Santa Barbara is one of the areas of
California where groundwater levels have been rapidly dropping,
and where water continues to be heavily pumped to irrigate
thousands of acres of farmland. Like other regions, the
Cuyama Valley has developed a state-mandated plan to address
overpumping under California’s groundwater law, the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act. But while that plan is just
starting to be implemented, disagreements over addressing the
water deficit have led to a bitter legal fight.
Officials from the California Water Resources Control Board are
urging people to avoid Lake Elsinore due to an algae bloom
that’s created dangerous levels of harmful toxins. Visitors are
urged to stay out of the water, keep their pets at a safe
distance and do not drink water or eat any fish or shellfish
from the lake. Five “distinct areas” of Lake Elsinore were
tested and high levels of toxins were detected that officials
say pose a significant health risk.
Thursday [June 27] is doomsday for water prices in San Diego.
That’s when the region’s water importer – the San Diego County
Water Authority – debates whether to boost its prices a
whopping 18 percent come Jan. 1. The price increase is massive
compared to previous rate increases, and the Water Authority’s
biggest customer, the city of San Diego, is pretty ticked off.
… San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria directed his powerful
contingent of 10 water board members to fight the increase. We
won’t know how hard they’ll fight until the full 33-member
board meets Thursday afternoon to vote on it. Gloria’s
administration is building a water recycling project, which
costs billions of dollars. Once its built, in 2035, San Diego
won’t buy as much water from the Water Authority. But for now,
San Diegans are saddled with the cost of building water
recycling and purchasing expensive water from outside city
boundaries.
… Perhaps it would be better to develop less water-intensive
developments. Recreation is certainly what were known for, but
at what cost? Each golf course uses approximately 1,000-acre
feet of water yearly (326,000,000 gallons of water).
Before the existence of the Salton Sea, the Colorado River
created ancient Lake Cahuilla many times over thousands of
years, making it the largest fresh water inland lake in
California. Now the Salton Sea is on the brink of a health and
environmental disaster that will impact all of Southern
California. We are currently all affected by the some of the
worst air quality in the nation. —Written by Kerry Berman, interpretive guide, I-naturalist,
author of “Enchanted Valley Palm Springs and Beyond”
… Under a blazing Palmdale sun recently, state and local
officials gathered to break ground on one such project, a
first-of-its-kind wastewater treatment facility that also
removes CO₂ from the atmosphere. Project Monarch, a
public-private partnership between the Palmdale Water District
and the climate technology company Capture6, will not only
provide residents with new water supplies, but will also help
California achieve its goals of 100% renewable energy and
carbon neutrality by 2045, according to Nancy Vogel, deputy
secretary for water at the California Natural Resources Agency.
As general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California, Adel Hagekhalil has overseen a public
agency that’s responsible for supplying the water that 19
million people drink. And he has been playing a leading role in
efforts to transform how Southern California manages water, one
of the most consequential issues the region faces as climate
change continues to upend the water cycle. His influence
in this critical sphere currently hangs in the balance. Earlier
this month, the water district’s board placed Hagekhalil on
leave as it investigates harassment allegations by his chief
financial officer that he denies. With him sidelined, some of
his supporters are concerned the policies he has been
pursuing could be affected.
… The film looked back to the dirty dealings behind Los
Angeles’s transformation into a major urban centre, taking
inspiration from the original California “water wars” that
erupted at the turn of the 20th Century. These occurred when
the Los Angeles water department bought up a swathe of land in
east California in order to divert water to sate its growing
population, to the detriment of the rural community it was
taking supply away from. What’s more, Chinatown borrows some
aspects of the life of civil engineer William Mulholland, the
controversial figure who was the first superintendent of
the Los Angeles water system and tasked with creating the
aqueduct to ensure the city had sufficient water supply; all
this aided the film’s sense of authenticity to the point where
its dark fictions have influenced the perception of the city’s
real history.
The City of Pasadena’s drinking water once again meets or
exceeds all state and federal requirements, according to the
2024 Annual Drinking Water Quality
Report released Wednesday. The report, which covers
the 2023 calendar year, details the sources, treatment,
composition, and quality of the City’s water supply, as well as
information on contaminants and health effects. In
2023, Pasadena Water and Power provided approximately 23,800
acre-feet or 8.6 billion gallons of water to serve more than
160,000 customers. About two-thirds of this supply was
purchased from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California, which sources water from the Colorado River and the
State Water Project in Northern California. The remaining
supply came from the City’s groundwater wells in the
Raymond Basin aquifer.
State, local and regional officials gathered Thursday to mark
the beginning of Palmdale Water District’s new water treatment
demonstration facility, a project that is expected to not only
bolster local water resources, but also make strives toward a
carbon-neutral reality. … Under the auspices of the
Palmdale Recycled Water Authority, the project will treat
recycled water — provided by PRWA, a joint powers authority
with PWD and the City of Palmdale — to a very high level, then
inject it into the underground aquifer to bolster local water
supplies. … The demonstration facility is intended to serve
as a model for a future full-scale treatment facility that will
be capable of producing an additional 5,000 acre-feet of water
per year for injection into the groundwater, increasing that
source of water for PWD customers.
… Just some 30 miles from Palm Springs, on the
southeastern edge of the Coachella Valley desert, Thermal is
the future home of the 118-acre private, members-only Thermal
Beach Club (TBC). According to an early version of the website,
club memberships will start at $175,000 a year. That price tag
makes it clear that the club is not meant for locals. Thermal,
an unincorporated desert community, currently has a median
family income of $32,340. The community lacks much of the basic
infrastructure that serves the western Coachella Valley,
including public water service—leaving residents dependent on
aging private wells for drinking water.
Carlsbad’s desalination plant, which provides 10 percent of San
Diego County’s drinking water, will get $19.4 million for the
construction of its new seawater intakes as part of $142
million in federal grants for water projects throughout the
West. … The improvements are intended to better protect
wildlife, the environment and the plant by rerouting trash from
the water stream to a sorting area where it can be removed. The
new intakes also have bars to prevent marine mammals from
getting close to the screens and a floating boom to stop
floating debris.
The vast territory known as the Owens Valley was home for
centuries to Native Americans who lived along its rivers and
creeks fed by snowmelt that cascaded down the eastern slopes of
the Sierra Nevada. Then came European settlers, and over time,
tribe members lost access to nearly all of that land.
Eventually, the water was lost, too: In the early 20th century,
the developers of Los Angeles famously built a 226-mile-long
aqueduct from Owens Lake to the city. … Owens Lake is now a
patchwork of saline pools covered in pink crystals and wetlands
studded with gravel mounds designed to catch dust. And today,
the four recognized tribes in the area have less than 2,000
acres of reservation land, estimated Teri Red Owl, a local
Native American leader. But things are changing, tribal members
say. They have recently reclaimed corners of the valley, buoyed
by growing momentum across the country to return land to
Indigenous stewardship, also known as the “Land Back”
movement.
By any objective standard, the southern coast of San Diego
County is enduring a long-running environmental nightmare.
Decades of billions of gallons of untreated human waste flowing
north from broken sewage infrastructure in Tijuana have
sickened a vast number of surfers and swimmers and many Navy
SEALs training at Coronado. Especially because of ailments
reported by border agents, some doctors worry that the health
threat goes far beyond active ocean users to include those who
spend extended time in coastal areas and breathe air that often
smells like a filthy portable toilet. Now there is fresh
confirmation of how uniquely awful this problem is. The
Surfrider Foundation has released a report on 567 sites in
which it tested water for unsafe bacteria levels and found
Imperial Beach — which has been closed for more than two years
— had far and away the dirtiest water in the United
States.
In the three years that Adel Hagekhalil has led California’s
largest urban water supplier, the general manager has sought to
focus on adaptation to climate change — in part by reducing
reliance on water supplies from distant sources and investing
in local water supplies. His efforts to help shift priorities
at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California,
which has traditionally focused largely on delivering imported
water to the region, have won praise among environmental
advocates who hope to reduce dependence on supplies from the
Colorado River and Northern California. However, now that
Hagekhalil is under investigation for harassment allegations
and has been placed on leave by the MWD board, some of his
supporters say they’re concerned that his sidelining might
interfere with the policies he has helped advance.
State water management officials must work more closely with
local agencies to properly prepare California for the effects
of climate change, water scientists say. Golden State
officials said in the newly revised California Water
Plan that as the nation’s most populous state, California
is too diverse and complex for a singular approach to manage a
vast water network. On Monday, they recommended expanding the
work to better manage the state’s precious water resources —
including building better partnerships with communities most at
risk during extreme drought and floods and improving critical
infrastructure for water storage, treatment and distribution
among different regions and watersheds.
It’s the most frustrating part of conservation. To save water,
you rip out your lawn, shorten your shower time, collect
rainwater for the flowers and stop washing the car. Your water
use plummets. And for all that trouble, your water supplier
raises your rates. Why? Because everyone is using so much less
that the agency is losing money. That’s the dynamic in
play with Southern California’s massive wholesaler, the
Metropolitan Water District, despite full reservoirs after two
of history’s wettest winters. … Should water users be
happy about these increases? The answer is a counterintuitive
“yes.” Costs would be higher and water scarcer in the future
without modest hikes now.
Today, Congresswoman Norma Torres and Congressman David Valadao
– members of the House Appropriations Committee – announced the
introduction of the bipartisan Removing Nitrate and Arsenic in
Drinking Water Act. This bill would amend the Safe Drinking
Water Act to provide grants for nitrate and arsenic reduction,
by providing $15 million for FY25 and every fiscal year
thereafter. The bill also directs the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) to take into consideration the needs of
economically disadvantaged populations impacted by drinking
water contamination. The California State Water Resources
Control Board found the Inland Empire to have the highest
levels of contamination of nitrate throughout the state
including 82 sources in San Bernardino, 67 sources in Riverside
County, and 123 sources in Los Angeles County.
Learn the history and challenges facing the West’s most dramatic
and developed river.
The Layperson’s Guide to the Colorado River Basin introduces the
1,450-mile river that sustains 40 million people and millions of
acres of farmland spanning seven states and parts of northern
Mexico.
The 28-page primer explains how the river’s water is shared and
managed as the Southwest transitions to a hotter and drier
climate.
The Topock Marsh has seen a significant drop in water levels
recently, with dry patches visible and locals concerned about
the effects on wildlife. The 4,000-acre Bureau of Reclamation
marsh is adjacent to the Colorado River in the Havasu National
Wildlife Refuge. Managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
it serves as a recreation area and wildlife habitat for the
Tri-state.