I’ve been enjoying the Aguanomics blog, which has as its premise that. if water were priced to encourage conservation, that’s what people would do. He’s got a post today about the water district down in Antelope Valley, where directors also seem to run unopposed for years and years, appoint their own successors, and maintain that [...]
This morning’s Mercury features an article by Paul Rogers about the Semitropic Water Bank down near Bakersfield, where the SCVWD has been storing water for the past decade. It’s not a true bank, in that we don’t get back the same water that we “deposit.” In years like this one when the District makes a [...]
In case you don’t regularly read the paper of record, here’s a NY Times article about Orange County’s water recycling. Although the author does get around to saying To understand the basics of contemporary water infrastructure is to acknowledge that most American tap water has had some contact with treated sewage. Our wastewater-treatment plants discharge [...]
From the Onion Filling a large number of bags with sand and then placing them side by side next to a body of water remains the nation’s most sophisticated method for flood prevention, a two-month FEMA study concluded Tuesday.
Tonight’s public hearing for the Alviso Slough Restoration Project was well-attended by supporters of the project. I’d estimate there were 125 people in the audience, and more than 50 got up to speak in favor, with 20-30 turning in comment cards to be read into the record. Katherine Oven began with a presentation that summarized [...]
Dick Santos has had it up to here. Paul Rogers has written a good article in this morning’s Mercury about the Alviso Slough Restoration Project, in the run-up to Wednesday’s public meeting. I would go farther in stressing that the strong feeling among Alvisans in support of this project seems to come from their living [...]
I’ve been happy to see the recent coverage of the SCVWD in the Mercury. Paul Rogers has written stories on the new water quality lab and the groundbreaking for the upper Guadalupe project. Scott Herhold has written a somewhat more critical piece on the proposed Gold Street Educational Center. This morning, Paul Rogers reported on [...]
This morning’s big item was the resolution to “Set Public Hearing and Issue Draft Engineer’s Report and Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for Public Review and Comment Regarding Alviso Slough Restoration Project.” Said reports are available here, but, be warned. They are massive. Paper copies are also available for public review at the Alviso branch [...]
Two weeks ago, when the SCVWD Board had got to the end of its budget week without having finished, they set a special meeting for today, 9 June, to get through it all. Director Estremera proclaimed “We won’t leave until it’s done, even if we have to set up cots in the Board room.” At [...]
Governor Schwarzenegger declared a drought yesterday, the first since 1991, although he stopped short of declaring a state of emergency. He’s calling for voluntary conservation efforts, and giving them time to work before imposing mandatory water rationing. It’s unfortunate that California as a whole whipsaws between pushing conservation in dry years and ignoring it in [...]