California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently released a final version of the Water Resilience Portfolio, the Administration’s blueprint for equipping California to cope with more extreme droughts and floods, rising temperatures, declining fish populations, over-reliance on groundwater and other challenges.
The portfolio outlines 142 state actions to help build a climate-resilient water system in the face of climate change. The actions tie directly to Administration efforts to carry out recent laws regarding safe and affordable drinking water, groundwater sustainability and water-use efficiency. They also elevate priorities to secure voluntary agreements in key watersheds to improve flows and conditions for fish, address air quality and habitat challenges around the Salton Sea and protect the long-term functionality of the State Water Project and other conveyance infrastructure.
“Water is the lifeblood of our state, sustaining communities, wildlife and our economy,” says Newsom. “For more than a year, my Administration has worked to assemble a blueprint to secure this vital and limited resource into the future in a way that builds climate resilience for all communities and sustains native fish and the habitat they need to thrive.”
Massachusetts DEP Awards $1.5 Million to Combat CSOs Into Connecticut River
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection is giving the Connecticut River Clean Up Committee (CRCC) $1.5 million to try and eliminate CSOs during heavy rain events, according to WWLP News.
The funding will go toward a number of projects including $475,000 for the York Street Pump Station and Connecticut River Crossing Project.
“That’s intended to address multiple issues with our aging wastewater collection system and that includes reducing the amount of combined sewer overflows that make it into the Connecticut River during wet weather,” Jaimye Bartak, communications manager for the Springfield Water and Sewer Commission, tells WWLP.
Hundreds of Faith Leaders Ask Congress to Continue Utility Shutoff Moratorium
More than 500 faith leaders are asking Congress to include a moratorium on utility shutoffs for the rest of the pandemic in the next COVID-19 aid package.
“A power, water and broadband shutoff is not about politics — it is about children, the elderly, people needlessly suffering and dying through heat waves and a pandemic,” the Rev. Dallas Conyers, program coordinator with South Carolina Interfaith Power and Light, said in a statement.
Conyers, who organized the new letter along with the No Shutoffs Coalition and Food & Water Action, urged lawmakers to “be bold and true to their moral values and the constituents they swore to serve by including this shutoff moratorium in the stimulus. The alternative is that they allow this preventable Environmental Justice catastrophe to happen.”
