They are building the Carlsbad Desalination Project, which will convert as much as 56 million gallons of seawater each day into drinking water for San Diego County residents. The project, with a price tag of $1 billion, is emerging from the sand like an industrial miracle. In California’s highly regulated coastal zone, it took nearly
The public will get another chance Monday to weigh in on La Grange Dam, erected on the Tuolumne River decades before the far larger Don Pedro Reservoir came along. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission launched studies on fish and other concerns after its 2012 ruling that La Grange needs a license. The dam has stood
California’s top water official told a key gathering of south state water representatives that “hard-earned progress” is being made on the Brown administration’s controversial plan to build twin tunnels through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The comments by Mark Cowin, director of the state Department of Water Resources, were aimed in part at dispelling rumors
The survey, by the Public Policy Institute of California, also determined likely voter sentiment on other major issues: • Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown leads Republican Neel Kashkari by 21 percentage points in the race for governor, with the challenger failing to alter the dynamic after their only scheduled debate. Brown, running for a historic fourth term, leads
California’s Supreme Court is being pressed to take up a case that could dramatically alter oversight for groundwater, building on a landmark water rights ruling the court made a generation ago. Earlier this summer, a Sacramento Superior Court judge ruled that rural Siskiyou County in Northern California must consider people downstream who depend on the
With California’s reservoir levels dropping, just about everyone is wishing the state had gotten more water this year. That doesn’t just depend on the weather, according to a team of scientists. Sierra Nevada forests play a big role in the state’s water supply. Just like crops, trees consume water. And Sierra Nevada forests are denser
A plan put in motion more than 10 years ago that some officials say will help offset the effects of future droughts took a step forward Friday when officials from the Bureau of Reclamation released the draft environmental impact report for a proposed reservoir near Fresno. Pitched as a way to store more water during
“Our official name is the New Democrats, but everyone refers to us as the ‘mods’ and that’s fine too,” says Assemblyman Henry T. Perea, a Fresno native. “When I took over chairing the mods, our reputation for a long time — since our founding — had really been a group of Democrats that kills bills.
California voters are likely to approve a $7.5 billion water bond on the November statewide ballot, according to a Field Poll released Wednesday. By nearly 2 to 1, voters indicated they support the water bond, a somewhat surprising result given that the majority of people polled reported at first that they were not familiar with
The Poseidon desalination plant in Carlsbad is set to deliver a new source of water for San Diego County when it’s completed late next year, but it will be a limited portion of the region’s water menu for years to come. The facility is one of three local projects that are scheduled to provide desalinated