News
L.A. water recycling imperiled after beach sewage spill, hurting drought conservation
Los Angeles Times – August 11
Problems at a Los Angeles sewage treatment plant that caused a massive spill into Santa Monica Bay last month have severely reduced the region’s water recycling ability. Even as Governor Gavin Newsom urges a voluntary 15% reduction in water usage, the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant‘s inability to fully treat sewage has forced local officials to divert millions of gallons of clean drinking water for purposes normally met with recycled water. Among those is an effort to protect coastal aquifers from seawater contamination, as well as the irrigation of parks, cemeteries, and golf courses across southwest Los Angeles County.
More Russian River diversions halted as supplies in upper basin grow increasingly scarce
North Bay Business Journal – August 10
State regulators expanded their drought-era halt of Russian River diversions this Tuesday, ordering more than 300 additional grape growers, ranchers, and other landowners to cease taking water from the basin as authorities seek to conserve rapidly diminishing reservoir supplies and meager stream flows. The curtailments, which took effect on Wednesday, come amid signs of inadequate compliance among more than 1,500 water rights holders in the upper river who fell under a wider curtailment last week.
State again exercises discretion to reject hydraulic fracturing permits in western Kern County
The Bakersfield Californian – August 9
For the second time, State Oil and Gas Supervisor Uduak-Joe Ntuk has used his discretionary authority to reject a series of permit applications to engage in the controversial oilfield technique of hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as “fracking.” Ntuk sent a letter Monday to Bakersfield-based oil producer Aera Energy LLC saying he has reviewed and denied applications filed by the company to frack 14 wells in the South Belridge oil field in western Kern County. The denials came one month after Ntuk's first use of his discretionary authority to deny California fracking permits.
CRC applies for permit to capture, store carbon in eastern Kern
Yahoo! Finance – August 6
California Resources Corp. (CRC) has applied for a federal permit to capture and bury up to 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in a depleted oil and gas reservoir in the Elk Hills area of Kern County. By October the company plans to apply for another permit with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to operate a similar carbon capture and sequestration facility nearby that would raise the project's capacity to 40 million metric tons. The combined project, dubbed Carbon TerraVault I, could become the first to tap what scientists see as Kern County's vast potential to draw greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and permanently store them underground, as a means of slowing climate change.
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