The Fallbrook and Rainbow Water Districts want to leave the San Diego County Water Authority because of high costs. The water district’s say the San Diego County Water Authority is not serving San Diegans well, and they want to join a different authority in Riverside County.
California’s complex system of water rights took shape starting in the mid-1800s, when settlers saw the state’s water as abundant and free for the taking — a time when a Gold Rush prospector could stake claim to river flows simply by nailing a notice to a tree. Today, California’s oldest and most senior water rights […]
Summer is approaching in California, and warmer temperatures have been melting the massive snowpack dumped on the state over the winter. Several swimmers and kayakers drowned this spring as rivers flooded and raged. The National Park Service took the rare step of closing much of Yosemite National Park’s scenic valley for several days to protect […]
This will be the first time in several years that California will enter summer with the majority of its reservoirs at or over 90 percent of total capacity, according to data from the California Department of Water Resources. As of Saturday, Shasta, Oroville, Folsom, New Bullards Bar, San Luis, Castaic and Cachuma reservoirs are over […]
The high Utah mountains gained 30 inches of water this winter, compared to 12 inches the year before. That amount of water in one season has done wonders for Utah’s ongoing drought. “This time last year, about 99% of the state was in severe drought,” said Laura Haskell, the drought coordinator with the Utah Division […]
The Fallbrook and Rainbow water districts have pushed back on an Assembly bill that would require a countywide public vote to approve their exit from the San Diego County Water Authority, accusing the city of San Diego of attempting to increase its power. The two rural districts said in a statement that the city is […]
This year’s historic snowpack has meant epic amounts of water flowing through California’s rivers, streams and creeks. … That’s more than the capacity of four standard 40-foot shipping containers rushing by each second. Around 40% of the roughly 500 stream gauges across the state are running above normal, provisional data from the U.S. Geological Survey […]
The shadows were long and the wind across the flatlands fierce as trucks and ATVs began pulling into Chepo Gonzales’s yard one afternoon this March. “Did you double up your socks today?” Gonzales teased one of the arrivals, a man who complained about cold feet during the previous night’s patrol. Another man leaned out the […]
An Assembly bill introduced late last week would require a countywide vote before two agricultural districts in north San Diego County could leave the San Diego County Water Authority. Assembly Bill 530, introduced Thursday by Tasha Boerner Horvath of Encinitas, would amend California’s Water Authority Act, to require a majority vote in both the separating […]
In a historic consensus, California, alongside the six other states that rely on the Colorado River for survival, announced an agreement last week for a plan to cut back water usage over the next three years. The proposal drafted by the three lower basin states – California, Arizona and Nevada – would cut water use […]
