California water agencies say they have nearly secured $4.5 billion in funding needed to build the state’s largest reservoir in nearly a century, Sites Reservoir, as a state environmental review process for the project comes to a rapid close after decades of delay.
The cost to bring Anderson Dam, which holds back the largest reservoir in California’s Santa Clara County, up to modern earthquake standards has increased to $2.3 billion, water officials said Monday. That’s double what was estimated a year ago, triple the price tag from two years ago, and nearly certain to drive water rates higher next year across Silicon Valley.
Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would allocate $7.25 million to help protect water agency infrastructure in California’s 3rd Congressional District against fire.
If the legislation is also supported by a Senate majority, the Georgetown Divide Public Utility District would get $1.25 million to construct a 2-million-gallon fire resilient water storage tank to aid in fire suppression efforts, according to a news release from the office of Congressman Kevin Kiley.
After decades of unrestricted pumping in the rain-starved northwestern corner of the Mojave Desert, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin Authority has the distinction of managing one of the most critically overdrawn aquifers in California.
As you walk along the Tijuana River Valley, it’s hard not to smell the pungent smell of sewage, effluent flowing its way down the valley toward the Pacific Ocean.
It’s been a problem for decades as Tijuana’s sewage infrastructure has failed to keep up with a city that seemingly grew to two million residents overnight. The system constantly spews untreated raw sewage that eventually makes its way north of the border.
Crews building San Diego’s Pure Water sewage recycling system continue to pass major milestones, including finishing key stretches of pipeline across the city, tunneling work under Interstate 805 and breaking ground on treatment plants.
But they’ve also been faced with some major hurdles and setbacks, including delays caused by lingering supply chain issues and a two-year-old flooding problem on Morena Boulevard that still hasn’t been fully solved.
Desalination facilities have critics who claim it’s too expensive and environmentally destructive, but there are supporters who want to make existing reverse osmosis technology better and many new ideas are being tested here in Southern California.
Despite an unusually wet season last year and predictions for a boisterous rainy season this year, California continues to struggle to store enough water to meet the needs of its population and farms. We’ve experienced two particularly grueling droughts in the last decade, with state officials repeatedly blaming climate change for the challenges.
A bipartisan congressional delegation led by California Democrat Senator Alex Padilla and Republican Representative Doug LaMalfa on Tuesday sent a letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers urging them to prioritize “critical emergency repairs” to levees in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds.
The San Diego County Water Authority will begin aqueduct maintenance next spring, with the $66 million project expected to be complete in summer 2026. The project area will include pipelines that run through Rancho Bernardo and Poway.
The Southern First Aqueduct Facilities Improvement Project will focus on 99 aqueduct support structures in streets, along access roads and within utility easements. There are two 48-inch- and 54-inch-diameter critical regional pipelines involved, officials said.
The plan is for one pipeline to be taken offline at a time, according to engineering manager Brent Fountain, who spoke at the Rancho Bernardo Planning Board’s Oct. 19 meeting. The project is “very proactive” because it will be replacing some of the concrete vault structures and doing other infrastructure work to components, such as air vents and pump wells, before it becomes absolutely necessary, Fountain said.
