(June 2, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)
Faced with another year of drought, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is offering customers a cash incentive to replace their grass lawns with drought-tolerant plants.
The Residential Drought Resistant Landscape Incentive Program will credit single-family residential customers $1 for each square foot of turf removed and [...]
(May 21, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)
The Department of Water Resources announced Wednesday that it would give State Water Project contractors 40% of what they requested. Although that figure remains low, it is far more than earlier allocation numbers, which started at 15% and then rose to 20% and 30%.
“Early May snow and rain improved [...]
(April 17, 2009, The Christian Science Monitor)
California’s third year of drought is stirring up long-standing – and usually low-simmering – tensions between farmers in northern and central California and urban consumers in the state’s dry Southland.
(Original Article Here)
(April 14, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)
It would be nice if only the overusers picked up that higher tab, but without a further, and very time-consuming, overhaul of the city’s rates, those higher prices would be borne by everyone. The council should take up that challenge too, but for now, the drought-year rates and the [...]
(April 8, 2009, Reuters)
Despite dire warnings of water shortages due to prolonged drought, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday rejected a plan to ration water in the nation’s second-largest city for the first time in 18 years.
The unanimous 15-0 vote against the plan marked a surprise setback for Los Angeles water managers, who like [...]
(March 24, 2009, The Wall Street Journal)
As Don Bransford prepares for his spring planting season, he is debating which is worth more: the rice he grows on his 700-acre farm north of Sacramento, or the water he uses to cultivate it.
After three years of drought in California, water is now a potential cash crop. Last [...]
(March 21, 2009, Robert Glennon, AlterNet)
The following is an excerpt from “Unquenchable: American’s Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It” by Robert Glennon. Copyright 2009 Robert Glennon. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington DC.
Editor’s Note: This excerpt is from the introduction of Glennon’s new book and follows a narrative about the water [...]
(March 19, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)
State officials announced Wednesday they will deliver more water to Southern California this year than previously predicted but cautioned that shipments will remain well below normal.
State water resources director Lester Snow said “a series of very beneficial storms in February and early March” prompted his department to increase allocations [...]
(March 16, 2009, The San Diego Tribune)
With its vast reserves running precariously low, the Metropolitan Water District has widened its unending search for water to even more distant sources.
Since 2007, Metropolitan’s stockpiles have shrunk by nearly half, drained by a combination of drought, diversions to safeguard fish, cuts in Colorado River supplies and population growth.
As [...]
(Feb. 26, 2009, Bloomberg News)
On a cloudless December day in the Nevada desert, workers in white hard hats descend into a 30- foot-wide shaft next to Lake Mead.
As they’ve been doing since June, they’ll blast and dig straight down into the limestone surrounding the reservoir that supplies 90 percent of Las Vegas’s water. In September, [...]
(Feb. 18, 2009, Steve Gorman, Reuters)
With a recent flurry of winter storms doing little to dampen California’s latest drought, the nation’s biggest public utility voted on Tuesday to impose water rationing in Los Angeles for the first time in nearly two decades.
Under the plan adopted in principle by the governing board of the L.A. Department [...]
(Feb. 13, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)
On Monday, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proposed accelerated water restrictions for Los Angeles — and the city got about a third of an inch of rain. In the past, showers were considered bad luck for a conservation push, but these days they are a fitting backdrop. We may get a [...]
(Feb. 10, 2009, The Los Angeles Times)
Even with the recent batch of rainstorms, the ongoing drought has grown so severe that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday called for increased citywide water restrictions and the adoption of a tiered water rate that would punish Department of Water and Power customers who fail to conserve.
Sprinkler [...]
(Jan. 6, 2009, Associated Press)
The green thumbs who keep lawns lush and flora flourishing in the city have found a new foe among the aphids, white flies and other yard pests — the water police.
“Nothing,” he said before driving on.
Just as some scofflaws keep an eye out for black-and-white patrol cars, gardeners have learned to [...]
(Oct. 22, 2008, The Los Angeles Times)
Reported from The Imperial Valley — On a rocky patch of desert, federal and state officials Tuesday began construction on a $172.2-million reservoir that will store water from the Colorado River that otherwise would be “lost” to Mexico.
The reservoir will mean more water for coastal Southern California, southern Nevada [...]
