We were excited to recently discover the winner of this year’s 2011 Water Is Life Poster contest , Anna Resnick, established a non-profit organization called “Arts2Cure“, which promotes interest in art while raising money and awareness to help the world around us. We couldn’t be prouder of Anna!  

The “2012 Water Is Life Calendar” will prominently feature Anna’s winning artwork from the “Water Is Life Poster Contest” during the month of January.  The calendar highlights artwork from selected poster contest winners throughout Southern California.   Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, Congress passed the Hoover Power Allocation Act of 2011. Once signed by President Obama, the Hoover Power Allocation Act will ensure fifty years of reliable, low-cost, renewable energy to move over 550,000 acre-feet of water annually on the Colorado River Aqueduct. That’s important for those of us in Southern California who depend on imported water because the cheaper it is to move the water from the Colorado River to us, the less expensive the water is.   Read the rest of this entry »

This week, the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) held a public hearing in Carson for Golden State Water Company ratepayers to voice their concerns regarding the retailer’s current and future water rates. Many of the residents in attendance Monday were the same ratepayers who came to our board meeting several months ago asking for our help with this issue.  While Central Basin is not responsible for setting the retail water rates, and while it is not our role to handle the rate case ourselves, we have worked hard to help the residents get the representation they need. The non-profit organization TURN (The Utility Reform Network) is now working with the Bell residents (and other Golden State customers from across California) on this case, pro-bono.  You can read Central Basin’s official statement on Monday’s hearing by clicking here.

You might not think that a meeting of California water officials means much to you, but last week in Anaheim some very important topics were discussed.

The Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) held its fall conference and one of the big topics is paying for new water infrastructure in the state.

As we blogged last week, the water infrastructure in much of California is starting to get a bit old and needs to be replaced.  We were hoping that Congress would pass some infrastructure spending as part of a stimulus bill, but so far it hasn’t. The ACWA meeting attracted about 1,700 water officials from around the state. We learned how California voters are feeling right now about public works spending in today’s tough economy when Mark DiCamillo of the Field Research Corporation shared the results of an opinion poll done on the California economy. Read the rest of this entry »