With San Diego more than half done with the first phase of its
Pure Water sewage recycling system, city officials say they are
considering major changes to how they will handle the second,
larger phase. … Plans for the second phase, which were
mostly put in place 13 years ago, could change significantly
based on new state regulations and new information about how
much purified water the city is projected to need. … But
the city could abandon a plan to build the phase two
purification plant on a vacant 17-acre site in Mission Valley,
and plans to store purified water from that plant in either
Lake Murray or the San Vicente Reservoir.
Southern California’s rivers and creeks once teemed with large,
silvery fish that arrived from the ocean and swam upstream to
spawn. But today, these fish are seldom seen. Southern
California steelhead trout have been pushed to the brink of
extinction as their river habitats have been altered by
development and fragmented by barriers and dams. Their numbers
have been declining for decades, and last week California’s
Fish and Game Commission voted to list Southern California
steelhead trout as endangered. Conservation advocates said they
hope the designation will accelerate efforts to save the fish
and the aquatic ecosystems on which they depend.
In what may be an illegal tax increase, the board of the
Metropolitan Water District just approved a two-year budget
that doubles the property tax it collects in its six-county
service area. MWD is a water wholesaler with 26 cities and
water retailers as its customers. Through those entities, MWD
supplies water to about 19 million people in Los Angeles,
Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura
counties. The new budget raises the wholesale rates by 8.5% in
2025 and then by 8.5% again in 2026. The rates for treated
water will go up 11% and then 10%. Metropolitan said it has to
raise rates and taxes to cover its operating costs because
they’ve been selling less water, first because of drought, and
then because of rain.
Work has been underway on a recycled water treatment project in
Santee for about two years. In another two years, some East
County residents will get their drinking water from the East
County Advanced Water Purification program. It’s a massive
billion-dollar recycled water treatment plant north of Santee
Lakes that, at its peak, has 250 construction workers working
on it. Kyle Swanson, the CEO and general manager at the Padre
Dam Municipal Water District, says the project will meet about
30% of drinking water demands in East County alone. Right now,
most East County residents get their water from Northern
California and the Colorado River, according to Swanson.
… California has some of the tightest toxic regulations and
strictest air pollution rules for smelters in the country. But
some residents of the suburban neighborhoods around Ecobat
don’t trust the system to protect them. … Uncertainty,
both about the safety of Ecobat’s operation going forward and
the legacy of lead it has left behind, weighs heavily on them.
… Early on, environmental officials flagged reasons for
concern about the lead smelter. State and federal regulators
issued an order and a consent decree in 1987 because of the
facility’s releases of hazardous waste into soil and water. An
assessment from that time found “high potential for air
releases of particulates concerning lead.”
The troubled Chiquita Canyon Landfill in Castaic received a new
violation last week from a state water agency for pumping
untreated leachate water from the landfill into local waterways
that empty into the Santa Clara River. A violation letter dated
April 9 was sent to the landfill operators by the Los Angeles
Regional Water Quality Control Board, raising concerns that the
landfill’s wastewater may reach groundwater sources fed by the
river and used for drinking water.
The Metropolitan Water District plans to spend up to $250
million on four non-traditional water projects that, combined,
could supply up to 100,000 Southern California households over
the next few years. Wastewater recycling, rainwater reclamation
and transforming ocean water into drinking water are some of
the technologies that could get money in the coming wave of
funding from MWD. The Los Angeles-based wholesaler, which helps
transfer water from Northern California and the Colorado River
to 26 retail water districts in the Los Angeles region, has
spent about $700 million on smaller, non-traditional water
projects since launching its Local Resources Program in 1990.
The amounts announced Monday, April 15, represent some of MWD’s
biggest investments in water innovation to date.
Rebuilding beaches after hurricanes is costing U.S. taxpayers
billions of dollars more than expected as the Army Corps of
Engineers pumps mountains of sand onto storm-obliterated
shorelines. Congress approved more than $770 million since 2018
for emergency beach “nourishment” projects after five
megastorms struck Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. Those
costs shattered government expectations about the price of
preventing beaches from disappearing through decades-old
programs that in many cases were created before the dangerous
effects of climate change were fully understood. Four of those
storms — Michael, Maria, Irma and Ian — were among the most
powerful to make landfall in the United States, raising
questions about the rising costs of pumping, dumping and
spreading sand onto beaches that are increasingly jeopardized
by the effects of climbing temperatures.
California’s Death Valley, the driest place in North America,
has hosted an ephemeral lake since late 2023. A NASA-led
analysis recently calculated water depths in the temporary lake
over several weeks in February and March 2024, demonstrating
the capabilities of the U.S.-French Surface Water and Ocean
Topography (SWOT) satellite, which launched in December 2022.
The analysis found that water depths in the lake ranged from
about 3 feet (1 meter) to less than 1.5 feet (0.5 meters) over
the course of about 6 weeks. This period included a series of
storms that swept across California, bringing record amounts of
rainfall.
As part of a $250 million commitment to support four water
supply projects in Southern California, Los Angeles will
receive $139 million over 25 years for its Groundwater
Replenishment Project in the San Fernando Valley, officials
announced on Monday, April 15. Earlier this month, the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s Board of
Directors approved separate agreements with water agencies,
including the city of Los Angeles, as part of its Local
Resources Program. The Metropolitan Water District is a
state-established wholesaler that provides water for 19 million
people in six counties. The Local Resources Program aims to
provide economic incentives for water developed and produced
from groundwater clean-up, water recycling and seawater
desalination throughout the agency’s six-county service area.
A new lawsuit filed by public drinking water systems in
California against manufacturers of toxic “forever chemicals”
is among the first to cite new Biden administration regulations
that set strict limits for the chemicals in drinking water. The
Orange County Water District and more than a dozen other
California water utilities filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles
federal court on Friday against seven manufacturers of per- and
polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, including Dynax America
Corp. and Arkema Inc. The lawsuit accuses the manufacturers of
negligence and of creating a nuisance by contaminating water
with PFAS, and seeks money to remediate that contamination.
The International Boundary and Water Commission is again being
sued over water-quality permit violations that have led to
rampant sewage polluting San Diego County’s southernmost
shoreline. The San Diego Coastkeeper and Coastal Environmental
Rights Foundation on Thursday filed a lawsuit in federal court
against the U.S. arm of the IBWC and its contractor Veolia
Water North America-West, alleging violations of the Clean
Water Act.
Near the western tip of the Mojave Desert and a few miles west
of NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, fields of
wildflowers painted the landscape yellow in spring 2024. On
April 9, the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on the Landsat 8
satellite acquired this image of fields of yellow wildflowers
blanketing Antelope Valley amid solar and wind farms. The day
after the image was acquired, the Antelope Valley California
Poppy Reserve reported that wildflowers were “popping,” but the
region’s famous poppies were not. Rangers at the reserve said
they also saw very few small poppy plants maturing, suggesting
an impressive poppy bloom is unlikely in the coming weeks.
Even though Pacific storms have become less frequent, as is
often the case in April, a new storm is brewing and will slice
across California just in time for the weekend, bringing areas
of rain, mountain snow and much cooler air, AccuWeather
meteorologists say. … A storm over the Gulf of Alaska will
drop southward just off the coast into Friday and will swing
toward California this weekend. … A few inches to
perhaps a foot of snow may fall over the high country of the
Sierra Nevada from the weekend storm.
President Biden plans to expand the perimeters of two national
monuments in California, protecting mountains and meadows in a
remote area between Napa and Mendocino as well as a rugged
stretch east of Los Angeles, two people familiar with the
administration’s plans said Thursday. The San Gabriel Mountains
National Monument and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National
Monument will each get new boundaries designed to protect land
of cultural significance to Native American tribes, as well as
biodiversity and wildlife corridors, said the people, who asked
not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the
plans publicly.
As the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities
continue to increase the levels of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere, the ocean is absorbing a large portion of the CO2,
which is making seawater more acidic. … And here’s one
important fact about ocean acidification: It’s not happening at
the same rate everywhere. The California coast is one of the
regions of the world where ocean acidification
is occurring the fastest. … In particular, effluent
discharged from coastal sewage treatment plants, which has high
nitrogen levels from human waste, has been shown to
significantly contribute to ocean acidification off the
Southern California coast.
Chiquita Canyon Landfill has drawn more than 10,000 complaints,
a number of lawsuits and calls for it to close from residents
and elected officials and is allegedly dumping untreated
stormwater into local waterways, according to a complaint
issued this week by state water officials. The L.A.
Regional Water Quality Control Board issued another violation
Tuesday against Chiquita Canyon Landfill, after Castaic and Val
Verde residents sent the agency numerous photos of the landfill
allegedly pumping from its stormwater basin into the local
waterway at night. Multiple photos were posted to local social
media groups as well.
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.
Pasadena Water and Power (PWP) has launched a new multi-year
campaign called “The Ripple Effect” aimed at promoting water
sustainability and resilience in the community. Acting General
Manager David Reyes urged all PWP customers to become local
water stewards for Pasadena and the region by participating
in the campaign. “We invite every member of our
community to embrace their role as local water stewards,” said
Reyes. “Each one of us holds a vital place in shaping
Pasadena’s water future.” About one-third of
Pasadena’s water supply comes from local groundwater, with the
remaining two-thirds imported from other sources. PWP
emphasized that understanding where the community’s water comes
from helps foster a greater appreciation for
this critical resource.
Nearly half of US prisons draw water from sources likely
contaminated with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, new research
finds. At least around 1m people incarcerated in the US,
including 13,000 juveniles, are estimated to be housed in the
prisons, and they are especially vulnerable to the dangerous
chemicals because there is little they can do to protect
themselves, said Nicholas Shapiro, a study co-author at the
University of California in Los Angeles.