Dear Reader,
Welcome to the Water Committee’s annual water issue which we put together in honor of World Water Day, which is Friday, March 22nd, 2024. Water – one of my favorite topics, though it is a very volatile business here in California.
I’m often asked about drought, or why so much water is wasted during storms, or why not ocean desalination – we will not be answering all these questions this year, but I will keep it in mind maybe for next year’s annual issue.
Here are some short answers though: California has a water management problem. If we managed our water better, we would still have droughts, but we wouldn’t hurt for water; stormwater runoff – we actually need some of those stormwater flows in our natural ecosystems and in our oceans. Stormwater helps move silt and that replenishes our beaches, stopping erosion, and as for ocean desalination – I covered that last year HERE.
This year however, here are some of the topics we are covering in this issue: Water and Peace (the theme for this years World Water Day), the importance of public comment, depletion of groundwater aquifers through construction dewatering, Zombie projects – Cadiz and the Delta Tunnel (aka Peripheral Canal, BDCP, CA WaterFix), water rate increases, hydrogen, salmon or the lack thereof, sewage issues in San Diego and Pure Water projects.
We have a packed water issue and we hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed putting it together. Give us some feedback and let us know what topics you would like to see covered.
Peace out,
Charming
Charming chairs the Angeles Chapter Water Committee, Cochairs the Sierra Club CA Water Committee and is the Vice chair of the Environmental & Social Justice Committee