As Hurricane Melissa tore through Jamaica, individuals and organizations in Central Florida were getting ready to provide the help the island would most certainly need. “Now we’re seeing the complete devastation…” said attorney Dan Newlin. Newlin said in a matter of hours, he and his team were able to pull together about 500 pounds of supplies, including food, medicine, and diapers. He said two of his planes will fly to Jamaica on Thursday morning. He said first, they’ll make a stop in Miami to pick up recording artist Shaggy, a Jamaican American who has a charitable organization. “He is going to go into the devastation area and actually play a very personal role,” Newlin said. “He plans on staying there. I’m going to be doing the transporting of goods, so I’ll be coming back here and then go back while he actually works his way into the area that has the most destruction.”Newlin said he has a strong connection to Jamaica himself and has been working with an organization that helps kids needing heart surgery on the island for the last five years. He said for this mission, it will probably be three to five flights to bring all of the supplies they’ve gathered. Other organizations and individuals in Central Florida spent Wednesday stepping up too. Including Kissimmee vice mayor Angela Eady, who brought together a task force of groups wanting to help at Solid Rock Community Church on Wednesday night. She said her own experience after a hurricane compelled her to help. “I know every feeling that every single parent that’s over on that island that has children to take care of that they don’t know how they’re going to eat tomorrow, I was there,” Eady said. Their task force is still in the early stages, but she said they will be collecting supplies and donations at Solid Rock Church. “Anything that you’re willing to give, whether it’s your time, your talent, or your treasure, which is your finances, we will accept,” She said. As far as what supplies they’ll be collecting, the church said to keep an eye out for updates on their website here.
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. —
As Hurricane Melissa tore through Jamaica, individuals and organizations in Central Florida were getting ready to provide the help the island would most certainly need.
“Now we’re seeing the complete devastation…” said attorney Dan Newlin.
Newlin said in a matter of hours, he and his team were able to pull together about 500 pounds of supplies, including food, medicine, and diapers. He said two of his planes will fly to Jamaica on Thursday morning. He said first, they’ll make a stop in Miami to pick up recording artist Shaggy, a Jamaican American who has a charitable organization.
“He is going to go into the devastation area and actually play a very personal role,” Newlin said. “He plans on staying there. I’m going to be doing the transporting of goods, so I’ll be coming back here and then go back while he actually works his way into the area that has the most destruction.”
Newlin said he has a strong connection to Jamaica himself and has been working with an organization that helps kids needing heart surgery on the island for the last five years.
He said for this mission, it will probably be three to five flights to bring all of the supplies they’ve gathered.
Other organizations and individuals in Central Florida spent Wednesday stepping up too. Including Kissimmee vice mayor Angela Eady, who brought together a task force of groups wanting to help at Solid Rock Community Church on Wednesday night.
She said her own experience after a hurricane compelled her to help.
“I know every feeling that every single parent that’s over on that island that has children to take care of that they don’t know how they’re going to eat tomorrow, I was there,” Eady said.
Their task force is still in the early stages, but she said they will be collecting supplies and donations at Solid Rock Church.
“Anything that you’re willing to give, whether it’s your time, your talent, or your treasure, which is your finances, we will accept,” She said.
As far as what supplies they’ll be collecting, the church said to keep an eye out for updates on their website here.
The matcha drinks at Kin Bakeshop are so popular that some customers wait hours for their fix.
The little Santa Barbara cafe was going through more than four pounds of the Japanese tea on its busiest days when it started getting tough to get a reliable supply.
This summer, the matcha dealer called to say that after a decade of importing from Japan, she had been forced to start rationing supply. There was no longer enough of the potent powder for everyone.
Kin Bakeshop found new supplies and hiked its prices, but the customers kept coming, said Tommy Chang, owner of the cafe.
“It’s like the harder that it is to get your hands on it, the more people want it,” he said. “They just need their matcha. They’ll come here no matter what.”
A growing thirst for matcha is roiling a delicate supply chain from Japanese tea farms to California’s cafes. The tea leaves are grown in the shade, specially processed and then stone-ground into the bright green, earthy powder used in drinks and desserts.
Tea farm owner Masahiro Okutomi in Sayama, Japan, in June 2025.
(Philip Fong / AFP/Getty Images)
As matcha’s bold aesthetic and health benefits have taken social media and consumers by storm, Japanese production is under strain from an aging population and hotter climate. That’s sent prices surging, and businesses scrambling to secure supply.
Exacerbating the problem is the fact that coffee shops are doubling and tripling down on their demand by heaping more matcha in drinks, said Lauren Purvis, who supplies Kin Bakeshop and other local cafes with tea and matcha. Traditionally, she has trained shops to use three grams of matcha in one serving, but recently she said some are using as many as nine grams, a fact that shocked her producers.
“A lot of my producers are like, ‘We have never seen a moment like this in the history of Japanese tea,’” she said.
Before the recent matcha boom, Japanese tea farmers were struggling to keep the industry alive. Younger Japanese have abandoned tea fields to work in cities and generally prefer coffee over tea. But signs of a shortage began to emerge in the summer last year as demand skyrocketed overseas.
Barista Julia Peng sifts matcha powder for lattes at Kin Bakeshop on Oct. 21, 2025 in Santa Barbara. The store no longer uses matcha in desserts, reserving it for beverages due to a shortage.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Purvis, who founded Mizuba Tea Co. in 2013, first felt the effects in December. An order was months late because one of her usually reliable Japanese suppliers didn’t have enough of the specialized tins used to package the matcha.
Then her producers told her that as much as 30% of their spring harvest was lost due to abnormally hot temperatures. When the tea leaves went up for auction in the summer, prices tripled.
Those increases have started to hit U.S. consumers, who are facing an added cost due to 15% tariffs on imports from Japan.
The Japan Tea Export Promotion Council has warned that shipments to the U.S. have been delayed by tariff processing. Some shipments have been stuck at customs and are at risk of being disposed of or sent back.
“Tariffs are just the icing on the cake,” Purvis said. “Matcha is just going to get a lot more limited and a lot more expensive.”
When Chang started Kin Bakeshop in 2020, he only needed a couple of bags per week. Now he buys them by the dozen, with extra orders whenever he can get it. After the first time the store ran out of matcha, he started keeping emergency stores, though those are often empty too.
“I’m in shock that it’s happening,” he said.
Matcha has taken over his menu. It now includes a strawberry matcha latte, black sesame matcha, and coconut matcha cloud.
When he learned that the supply of his usual matcha was restricted, Chang decided to spend about $135 per pound, or 70% more, on a higher grade of matcha that was less prone to shortages.
The store used to serve matcha desserts too, such as lemon yuzu mochi doughnuts dusted with matcha, but now saves the precious powder for beverages.
A matcha latte with whipped cream at Kin Bakeshop. Historically, the U.S. has been the largest consumer of Japanese tea.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Historically, the U.S. has been the largest consumer of Japanese tea. But as matcha demand has gone global, U.S. businesses are increasingly competing with buyers from Europe to the Middle East to Southeast Asia.
The Japan Tea Export Promotion Council estimates that the total volume of tea exports increased by 154% in 2024 compared with a decade earlier. The U.S. went from accounting for 45% of exports to 32% in the same time frame.
To meet market demand, the Japanese government has encouraged tea farmers to increase production of tencha, the tea used to make matcha, sometimes at the expense of other types of tea.
Other countries such as China, Vietnam and South Korea are also growing more tencha. But new plants take years to cultivate, and suppliers said there is deep penchant among buyers for Japanese matcha, which is seen as the highest quality.
The scarcity has prompted some businesses to resort to extreme measures. Purvis said one producer she works with had a stranger show up and refuse to leave without matcha.
Jason Eng, who works in business development and partnerships for Kametani Tea in Nara, Japan, said buyers are asking to sign annual contracts to secure matcha for the following year.
“Our buyers and partners overseas, they are all running dry, and they’re panicking,” he said. “Even new clients are asking for a ridiculous amount of tea. It’s completely unsustainable.”
Luke Alcock, founder of Premium Health Japan, a matcha supplier in Uji — a city near Kyoto famous for its fine tea —said he’s gone from simply facilitating sales to buying and holding his own stock to ensure he can supply brands through next year’s harvest.
Although about 40% of his clientele is in the U.S., he’s gotten increasing inquiries from the Middle East and Europe, even with rising prices.
He’s also been careful to protect the privacy of his suppliers, since buyers are so eager to get more matcha.
He’s also been careful to protect the privacy of his suppliers, since buyers are so eager to get more matcha. One customer requested the contact information of a manufacturer, which Alcock assumed was for customs clearance. That customer then used the details to reach out to his supplier and do business directly.
“People are just ruthless,” he said. “We’re still seeing how the market reacts, but it’s showing that people are going to keep buying.”
Glassnode data recorded a $4.1 billion monthly increase in the aggregate stablecoin supply, a 21-month high for fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies following bullish momentum.
Since October last year, stablecoin supply has shot up steadily with Bitcoin’s price uptick. This ascent has impacted the aggregated stablecoin market cap, which stood above $128 billion as of Jan. 18. The increase marks the largest inflow since March 2022.
Tether’s USDT dominated the scene with nearly 73% in market share. The market’s second-largest stablecoin, Circle USD Coin (USDC), followed with a 19% share.
Binance USD (BUSD) issued by Paxos, which the Securities and Exchange Commission alleges is a security, came third. MakerDAO’s DAI and TUSD were also factored into Glassnode’s report.
The collective stablecoin pool is an essential piece in cryptocurrency transactions via centralized venues like Coinbase and decentralized exchanges like Uniswap. Stablecoin supply and market cap progression are sometimes used to gauge market sentiment, with increments typically associated with bullish market outlooks.
Stablecoin illicit transactions are up
A Chainalysis report on Crypto Crime Trends noted a shift in criminal activity associated with stablecoins alongside increased transactions and supply.
The research found that stablecoins accounted for roughly 60% of illicit transactions over two years. Chainalysis stressed that findings were published on initial estimates, and the trend did not apply to all criminal operations.
This isn’t the case for all forms of cryptocurrency-based crime. Sanctions-related volume and scam inflows are primarily driving the trend, whereas stablecoins are rarely used for ransomware and darknet markets.
Issuers like Tether can freeze accounts and work closer with law enforcement instead of more decentralized protocols. USDT’s operator deactivated more than 30 addresses linked to suspicious transactions in Israel and Ukraine.
The report states that Bitcoin’s (BTC) high liquidity made it the preferred crypto choice for bad actors despite a 30% drop in BTC-based illicit finance since 2021.
December should have been the most profitable month of the year for Liberty Ducks, a poultry farm in Sonoma County. Instead, the 31-year-old business was suddenly face to face with a possible shutdown.
“There was never going to be a good time for this to hit, but during the holidays was especially hard,” said Jennifer Reichardt of Liberty Ducks. The farm, she said, has been “crippled” by the outbreak.
In December, the farm was one of nine locations in Sonoma County infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as bird flu. As a result, poultry farmers in the county have been forced to destroy more than 1 million birds while trying to quarantine their flocks to curb the outbreak.
The outbreak has been ongoing since 2022, but its sudden surge in December has meant restaurants in the winery-rich region are seeing their supplies of poultry dwindle. Experts warn this may only be the beginning of a bird flu spike in California .
“Restaurants are looking for product,” said Bill Mattos, president of the California Poultry Federation.
The lingering disease has yet to affect prices or supply across the state as a whole, Mattos said, given the poultry available from other counties and outside the state. But restaurants, stores and wholesalers who prefer to use local sources are seeing their supply dwindle.
“Everyone is looking to see what they can do to prevent it even more,” Mattos said.
Liberty Ducks supplies Bay Area restaurants and more than 200 wholesalers. But because the company’s locations are under quarantine, the farm can’t start new production, Reichardt said.
“Our business will be at a standstill for at least two months until the quarantine is lifted or we find other locations,” she said.
Poultry companies have been feeling the effects of the avian flu since February 2022, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture first detected the virus in commercial and backyard flocks.
Since then, more than 79 million birds across the U.S have been affected in 47 states. In California, the virus has affected 37 commercial and 22 backyard flocks, totaling 5.4 million birds, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
Since the outbreak began, the avian pandemic has not gone by unnoticed by consumers either.
Last year, the outbreak helped make egg prices skyrocket across the country. According to the USDA, prices in California for a dozen large eggs jumped to $7.37 in January 2023, up from $2.35 the year before. The USDA said that while demand for eggs was surging in December 2022, the avian flu was cutting the supply; in the last week of that month, there were about 29% fewer eggs than at the beginning of 2022.
A higher incidence of the highly pathogenic avian influenza is common during this time of year because of the migratory patterns of wild birds, which carry the virus as they fly from the Arctic to California, said Dr. Maurice Pitesky, associate professor at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine whose research focuses on the disease.
Unfortunately, the same climate and geography that makes poultry farming popular in some areas is what draws in wild birds like ducks and geese, carrying the flu with them into the state. The virus can pass from one animal to another through saliva, mucus or feces.
“Wildlife can bring this virus into their farms because the virus is so infectious,” Pitesky said.
Farmers have tried to keep their flocks safe through bio-security practices, such requiring clean footwear before workers enter a farm to keep feces from contaminating the area under the shoes, Mattos said. Several big farms also try to reduce risk by prohibiting their workers from owning backyard flocks.
This past month, however, poultry farmers in Northern California have been particularly hit by the virus.
“I’m not sure if it’s a more virulent strain or what,” Mattos said. “The industry expects it to come and show up, we just didn’t expect it to be in big numbers.”
According to the USDA, 11 flocks in California have tested positive for the virus in the past 30 days, affecting more than 3.3 million birds.
In Sonoma County, the effect has been significant.
Nine poultry in sites in southern Sonoma County have been infected with the virus, requiring more than a million birds to be euthanized to prevent further spread, according to the county.
On Dec. 5, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors declared a local emergency because of the disease. Flocks that have been infected have been put in quarantine, and county officials are hoping to curb the spread of the virus.
The flu’s effect in the county and region is still unclear, but officials are concerned that the consequences could ripple through affected farms, workers, restaurants and markets that rely on the farms’ eggs, meat and jobs.
A spokesperson for Sonoma County said officials have not yet done an economic impact study, but are focusing resources on containing the outbreak.
According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, five California counties — Fresno, Marin, Merced, San Joaquin and Sonoma — have active avian flu infections.
The flu could be especially damaging to businesses like Liberty Ducks that are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“After COVID, we were already in such a tight financial space, this really could have been the final blow,” said Reichardt.
She and her brother set up a GoFundMe campaign to keep the business afloat, and have raised more than $184,000 so far.
“The community outreach is not only letting us continue on and help with cash flow, but also mentally gives us such a lift to fight on,” Reichardt said.
Some farms can also apply for federal compensation for the value of lost birds, but Mattos said it is not enough to cover what farmers could have made from their flocks.
For now, farmers and backyard flock owners are being urged to take precautions and keep their birds isolated from exposure.
And depending on this year’s rains, poultry farmers may be seeing just the first effects of the outbreak this year, Pitesky warned.
“If it’s a wet year, unfortunately, [wild birds] will probably stay here until April and May,” he said. “Most likely, they’ll be dealing with this for several more months.”
California is set to adopt regulations that will allow for sewage to be extensively treated, transformed into pure drinking water and delivered directly to people’s taps.
The regulations are expected to be approved Tuesday by the State Water Resources Control Board, enabling water suppliers to begin building advanced treatment plants that will turn wastewater into a source of clean drinking water.
The new rules represent a major milestone in California’s efforts to stretch supplies by recycling more of the water that flows down drains.
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“We’re creating a new source of supply that we were previously discharging or thinking of as waste,” said Heather Cooley, director of research at the Pacific Institute, a water think tank in Oakland. “As we look to make our communities more resilient to drought, to climate change, this is really going to be an important part of that solution.”
Water agencies in many areas of California have been treating and reusing wastewater for decades, often piping effluent for outdoor irrigation or to facilities where treated water soaks into the ground to replenish aquifers.
The regulations will enable what’s known as “direct potable reuse,” putting highly treated water straight into the drinking water system or mixing it with other supplies.
Cooley and other water experts say it’s inaccurate to call this “toilet to tap,” a term that was popularized in the 1990s by opponents of plans to use recycled water for replenishing groundwater in the San Gabriel Valley. They say the sewage undergoes an extremely sophisticated treatment process, and scientific research has shown the highly purified water is safe to drink.
“This is really about recovering resources, not wasting precious resources,” Cooley said. “This is really, I think, an exciting opportunity for helping to realize that vision of a more circular sort of approach for water.”
The process of developing the regulations, which was required under legislation, has taken state regulators more than a decade. It included a review by a panel of experts.
“We wanted to absolutely make sure that we put public health first priority, so that the public had confidence,” said Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the State Water Board’s Division of Drinking Water.
“We have a very thorough set of regulations,” Polhemus said. “It has broad support, and we think we’ve gotten it to a point where everybody is comfortable with what it presents.”
Building plants to purify wastewater is expensive, and it’s likely to be several years before any Californians are drinking the treated water. But Los Angeles, San Diego and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California are all planning to pursue direct potable reuse as part of ongoing investments in recycling more wastewater.
The regulations detail requirements for infrastructure, treatment technologies and monitoring, Polhemus said, and ensure “triple redundancy for each of the areas we’re treating for,” including bacteria and viruses as well as chemicals.
The water will go through various stages of treatment, passing through activated carbon filters and reverse-osmosis membranes, as well as undergoing disinfection with UV light, among other treatments.
The regulations require such thorough purification that at the end of the process, the water will need to have minerals added back so that the water will regain a taste and chemistry resembling typical drinking water.
“This will be by far the most well-treated, highest-quality water served to the public,” Polhemus said. “It’s an incredible amount of treatment.”
Once the regulations are approved by the State Water Board, they still need to be approved by the Office of Administrative Law, which is expected next year.
The treatment technology is similar to the process used for desalinating seawater, but recycling wastewater requires less energy and is less costly than turning saltwater into freshwater. Polhemus said the costs for purifying wastewater will probably be about half the costs of desalinating ocean water.
Direct potable reuse has been done for years in other water-scarce parts of the world, including Namibia and Singapore. Some communities in Texas are also doing it. Colorado has rules in place allowing potable reuse, while Arizona and Florida are developing regulations.
In California, some agencies have for years been doing indirect potable reuse, in which highly treated water is used to replenish groundwater, and is later pumped out, treated and delivered as drinking water.
Orange County, for example, has its Groundwater Replenishment System, the largest project of its kind in the world. The system purifies wastewater using a three-step advanced treatment process, and the water then percolates and is injected into the groundwater basin, where it becomes part of the water supply.
While Orange County plans to stick with indirect potable reuse, Polhemus said, other water districts are looking at direct reuse as an approach that saves costs by using existing infrastructure rather than building separate systems for recycled water.
This strategy also offers cities and water agencies a new route for reducing reliance on imported supplies and scaling up the use of recycled water — a source that water managers view as relatively drought-proof.
“Our communities are always going to generate wastewater even in the worst drought. And having this available can really augment that supply and add resiliency,” Polhemus said.
Recycling more wastewater also brings other environmental benefits, reducing the amount of treated effluent that flows into coastal waters.
“It’s easier on the environment you’re taking the water from, it’s easier on the environment you’re discharging it to, and sets us up to be better stewards of our environment overall,” Polhemus said.
The complexity and costs of the treatment plants will mean that large, well-funded agencies will adopt the technology first, Polhemus said. Direct potable reuse also is suited to coastal areas, he said, because the reverse-osmosis treatment, like a desalination plant, generates brine that can be discharged offshore.
As for how much purified water might be used, Polhemus said if some coastal communities are able to get 10% to 15% of supplies from treated wastewater during a drought, that would represent a significant improvement in diversifying supplies.
“Someday, it could be 25% to 40% of some communities’ water supply,” Polhemus said. “At some point, we could recycle the majority of wastewater that now flows to the ocean just as treated wastewater.”
The Metropolitan Water District plans to start doing direct potable reuse as part of its Pure Water Southern California project, building a $6-billion facility in Carson that is slated to become the country’s largest water recycling project.
It’s scheduled to deliver its first treated water as soon as 2028. Initially, the district says the supplies will be used largely to replenish groundwater basins for later use, with some water also going to serve oil refineries and other industrial users.
By 2032, MWD officials plan to be producing 115 million gallons of purified water a day. Of that, they expect to send 25 million gallons per day directly to a plant in La Verne to be mixed with other supplies from the Colorado River and Northern California, and delivered as drinking water throughout the region — an amount that’s projected to increase to 60 million gallons a day once the facility is operating at its full capacity of 150 million gallons daily.
Depending on how wet or dry a year is, the district will be able to store more water in aquifers or send more purified water directly into the distribution system, said Deven Upadhyay, the MWD’s executive officer and assistant general manager.
“We’re building that flexibility into the design of this program,” Upadhyay said. “If you needed to push more into direct potable reuse, you would be able to do that and back off of your deliveries to the groundwater basins.”
He said that flexibility is valuable as California deals with more extreme droughts fueled by climate change.
“Our view is that over time, those imported supplies will decline. And we want to take the water that is used, and reuse it as much as possible, and try to close that cycle of water use,” Upadhyay said. “Because it’s such a drought-proof supply, it really creates another degree of resilience for us.”
The Metropolitan Water District functions as Southern California’s wholesaler, delivering supplies to cities and agencies that serve 19 million people in six counties.
Currently, about 450,000 acre-feet of wastewater is being recycled in Metropolitan’s service area, an amount equivalent to the water use of about 1.3 million households.
The MWD’s water recycling project, as well as Los Angeles’ Operation Next project and San Diego’s Pure Water project, will dramatically increase the use of recycled water once they are built out, Upadhyay said.
“We should expect a doubling of recycled water that Southern California is producing and drinking by the time those three projects are completed,” Upadhyay said.
And part of that will come thanks to the state’s new regulations that enable direct reuse, he said.
“It’s a major milestone for the state,” Upadhyay said. “This is going to lead to water agencies throughout the state starting to plan for potable reuse projects in a way that results in a more resilient California water future.”
In the Bay Area, the Santa Clara Valley Water District also plans to pursue potable reuse.
In a study last year, researchers at the Pacific Institute said California currently recycles about 23% of its municipal wastewater, and has the potential to more than triple the amount that is recycled and reused.
Cooley said some portion of that will come through direct reuse where it pencils out for communities.
“It’s just part of the puzzle in terms of helping us to realize the full potential for recycled water,” Cooley said. “This is an important piece of helping make our communities more resilient.”
There has been growing public acceptance of recycling water as people have experienced more severe droughts and seen recycling projects expand, Cooley said.
Still, she said, acceptance isn’t universal, and “it’s important to really address openly concerns that people have as communities consider this as an option.”
She said reusing more water is one of multiple strategies that California should adopt, along with capturing more stormwater and improving water-use efficiency.
Peter Gleick, the Pacific Institute’s co-founder and president emeritus, pointed out that the water-recycling technologies in use today are fundamentally the same approaches used by astronauts on the International Space Station.
“It’s not toilet to tap,” Gleick said, adding that it’s better described as “toilet to an unbelievably sophisticated system that produces incredibly pure water to tap.”
In his book “The Three Ages of Water,” Gleick wrote that reusing water provides a valuable new supply, and should be part of a set of solutions for long-term water sustainability.
“High-quality water produced from wastewater is an asset,” Gleick wrote. “We have the ability and technology to produce incredibly clean water from any quality of wastewater, and we should rapidly expand the capacity to do so.”
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A solution to help bolster Southern California’s water outlook during future droughts is taking shape in the Mojave Desert. Water transported in canals and pipelines has begun flowing into a series of basins carved into the desert, filling a large underground reservoir that will be available to draw upon in dry times.
The facility, called the High Desert Water Bank, started taking in supplies from the State Water Project last month. Water diverted from the East Branch of the California Aqueduct has been flowing through a 7-foot-wide pipeline and gushing into one of the basins, where it gradually percolates into the desert soil and recharges the groundwater.
Newly drilled wells will allow for water to be pumped out of the aquifer when needed to supply cities and suburbs throughout Southern California.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is spending $211 million to build the facility. The district’s officials say the project is a vital step in improving the region’s water infrastructure to adapt to climate change.
“We know that climate change will bring more of the dramatic swings between wet and dry that we saw over the last few years, so we must take every opportunity to store water when it is available,” said Adán Ortega Jr., chair of the MWD board.
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The agency already stores water underground in other areas, but the High Desert Water Bank represents the MWD’s largest investment in groundwater storage to date.
The district developed the facility working with the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency, which owns the property near Lancaster.
After three years of construction, the initial phase of the project has allowed the district to take advantage of the plentiful water from this year’s historic storms. And more water could be coming with the current strong El Niño, which has brought forecasts of another wet winter.
Water fills one of the recharge basins at the High Desert Water Bank near Lancaster, where the Metropolitan Water District is starting to store water underground for cities across Southern California.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
There is enough aquifer space in the Antelope Valley groundwater basin to store up to 280,000 acre-feet of water, comparable to the capacity of Castaic Lake and nearly four times the size of Big Bear Lake.
The facility, which is scheduled to be fully built in 2027, will allow the MWD to put in or withdraw up to 70,000 acre-feet of water per year — enough for about 210,000 average households.
With this much additional storage in place, Ortega said, “we can confront the next drought with more confidence.”
By increasing the district’s ability to store and withdraw water along the aqueduct, the project provides the state’s largest urban water supplier greater flexibility and a valuable backup supply to adapt to more extreme cycles of drought and wet weather.
The district’s managers said having the water bank will ensure more reliable supplies during severe droughts like the one during the last three years, when supplies from Northern California were drastically cut, forcing mandatory water restrictions for nearly 7 million people.
By banking more backup supplies, the project is also intended to help Southern California reduce reliance on the overburdered Colorado River, where depleted reservoirs remain at low levels.
“When drought hits California, we can turn to this stored water, instead of drawing more heavily on our Colorado River supplies,” MWD General Manager Adel Hagekhalil said.
Hagekhalil and other officials spoke this past week at an event inaugurating the facility. As they spoke beneath a tent, water gushed into the pond behind them, creating a fountain-like upwelling in the wind-rippled surface.
At a turnout facility on the California Aqueduct, water flows into the newly built High Desert Water Bank in the Antelope Valley. The water percolates underground to be stored for Southern California’s cities.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
“Climate change is upon us,” Hagekhalil said. “We need to have creative new tools, holistic solutions.”
Hagekhalil noted that the district is developing a new climate adaptation master plan, focusing on building more flexibility into the region’s water system to improve reliability of supplies. He said storing more water underground will be one piece of the district’s climate adaptation efforts in the coming years, along with recycling wastewater and cleaning up contaminated groundwater.
“It’s finding new ways to take water when we have it during wet years and put it in the ground, so we can have access to it when we have dry conditions,” Hagekhalil said. “This is the future of water management in the 21st century.”
Water has been flowing into the facility from the California Aqueduct since mid-September. By the end of the year, the district estimates it will have stored about 12,000 acre-feet in the groundwater basin, enough to meet the annual needs of about 36,000 average households.
Managers of the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency (AVEK) said this part of the High Desert is well-suited for storing water underground. The 1,300-acre property includes vacant land and farm fields that were left dry and abandoned years ago.
As work crews have built recharge basins, they have removed old irrigation systems.
Farms in the valley have produced a variety of crops, such as hay, peaches, carrots and onions, but falling groundwater levels and increased costs for imported water have led to a decline in agriculture. The Antelope Valley groundwater basin is managed under a 2015 court ruling, which regulates pumping to manage supplies and address the long-term declines in aquifer levels.
“Our groundwater supplies, they’ve diminished. And thank goodness for these water banks,” said George Lane, president of the Antelope Valley agency’s board. “It will raise the water table. … It was completely overdrafted for a number of years.”
The Metropolitan Water District will be able to recover 90% of the water it stores at the site, paying the Antelope Valley agency when it withdraws water.
Evaporation losses and water that will be left underground will account for the remaining 10%, said Matthew Knudson, general manager of AVEK.
So far, crews have finished building six recharge basins to receive water. When finished, the water bank will have 26 recharge basins covering about 600 acres, and 27 wells for recovering water from the aquifer.
The groundwater is tainted with toxic arsenic, so the project will also require building a facility to treat the water before sending it flowing back into the California Aqueduct.
Geese gather by the groundwater recharge basin at the High Desert Water Bank near Lancaster, where the Metropolitan Water District has begun storing water in the desert aquifer.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
The agencies plan for water levels to rise and fall as supplies are deposited and withdrawn. Groundwater levels at the site now range from about 260 feet to 280 feet underground, and will be allowed to rise as high as 75 feet underground at full capacity.
When water is pumped back into the aqueduct, it will flow into the MWD’s delivery system. The district supplies drinking water for 19 million people in six counties from San Diego to Ventura.
Ortega praised the agencies’ collaborative efforts on the project, saying the High Desert Water Bank is an example of “the kinds of partnerships that we’re going to need to establish throughout the state as climate change forces us to become more interdependent.”
One big plus, Ortega said, is that the underground storage facility is coming online “in time to take advantage of this historically wet year.”
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New York Fed President John Williams on Thursday sounded content with the current level of interest rates, but said he will be watching data closely to make sure the level of rates is high enough to keep inflation moving down.
“We’ve done a lot,” Williams said during a discussion at a conference sponsored by Bloomberg News.
The numbers: Two U.S. regional gauges of manufacturing sentiment showed signs in June that they may be improving after a rough patch, according to data released Thursday.
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s manufacturing index slipped further to a reading of negative 13.7 in June from negative 10.4 in the prior month, but economists had expected a reading of negative 14.8, according to a Wall Street Journal survey of economists. This is the tenth straight negative reading.
Orders for manufactured goods rose 0.4% in April, the Commerce Department said Monday. It is the fourth increase in factory-goods orders in the past five months.
Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal were expecting a 0.6% rise.
The gain was led by transportation equipment. Excluding that sector, orders were down 0.2%.
Durable-goods orders rose 1.1% in April, unrevised from the initial estimate last week. The advance durable-goods data is always released ahead of the full report. Nondurable-goods orders fell 0.1% in April.
Orders for nondefense capital goods, excluding aircraft, rose a revised 1.3% in April, down slightly from the prior estimate of a 1.4% increase. The gain was led by computers and machinery.
The numbers: The Philadelphia Federal Reserve said Thursday its gauge of regional business activity rose to negative 10.4 in May from negative 31.3 in the prior month. Any reading below zero indicates deteriorating conditions. This is the ninth straight negative reading and the eleventh in the last twelve months.
Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal expected a negative 20 reading in May.
Key details: The barometer on new orders increased 13.8 points but remained at negative 8.9 in May. The shipments index rose slightly to negative 4.7. The measure on six-month business outlook worsened to negative 10.3 in May from negative 1.5 in the prior month.
Big picture: The continued contraction in activity is a sign that U.S. manufacturing continues to struggle.
The Philadelphia Fed index is closely followed to give economists an advance signal of factory conditions across the country.
The numbers: The New York Fed’s Empire State business conditions index, a gauge of manufacturing activity in the state, tumbled 21.7 points to negative 32.9 in January, the regional Fed bank said Tuesday.
This is the lowest level since the worst of the pandemic in May 2020 and among the lowest levels in the survey’s history, the regional Fed bank said.
Economists had expected a reading of negative 7, according to a survey by The Wall Street Journal.
Any reading below zero indicates contraction.
Key details: The new orders index fell 27.5 points to negative 31.1 in January. Shipments fell 27.7 points to negative 22.4.
The indexes for prices paid and prices received moved lower.
The employment gauges were also weak.
Firms expect little improvement in coming months, with the futures index at 8.
Big picture: The Federal Reserve’s steady increase in interest rates is having a slowing impact on capital spending as firms are scaling back investment, economists said. Demand for goods is also slowing after two strong years on the weak global economy. Added to the mix is the strong dollar which makes U.S. exports more expensive.
The market pays attention to the Empire State index because it is seen as a early read on the national ISM manufacturing index to be released early next month.
The ISM factory index contracted in December for the second straight month, falling to 48.4% from 49% in the prior month.
Looking ahead: “Manufacturing conditions in the U.S. are deteriorating and the worst is likely ahead,” said Gurleen Chadha, economist at Oxford Economics.
SPX, -0.20%
opened lower on Tuesday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, 3.489%
retreated to 3.51% after reaching 3.57% in early morning trading.
The numbers: A closely-watched index that measures U.S. manufacturing activity fell 0.7 percentage points to 50.2 in October, according to the Institute for Supply Management on Tuesday.
Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal had forecast the index to inch down to 50. Any number below 50% reflects a shrinking economy.
It is the lowest level since May 2020.
Key details: The index for new orders remained in contraction territory, rising 2.1 points to 47.1. The production index rose 1.7 points to 52.3.
The employment index rose 1.3 points to 50 in October.
Supplier deliveries fell 5.6 points to 46.8 in October. This is the first time that deliveries were in a “faster” territory since February 2016.
The price index dropped 5.1 points to 46.6., also the lowest reading since the pandemic. Pricing power is shifting back to the buyer, the ISM said.
Only 8 of the 18 manufacturing industries reported growth in October.
Big picture: Manufacturing has been slowing recently led by softening business spending and fading demand for consumer goods. Economists think it is inevitable the index slips below the 50 threshold.
In a separate data, the S&P global U.S. manufacturing PMI inched up to 50.4 in its “final” reading in October from the “flash” reading of 49.9. This is down from a reading of 52 in September.
What ISM said: Manufacturing is slowing down and could soon enter contraction territory, but that doesn’t mean there will be a recession in the U.S., said Timothy Fiore, chair of the ISM factory business survey.
“I don’t see a collapse of new orders. I don’t see a collapse of the PMI,” Fiore said.
Looking ahead: “Recession jitters among manufacturers won’t disappear any time soon…manufacturing will endure more pain as demand weakens at home and abroad while prices stay high and interest rates remain fairly elevated,” said Oren Klachkin, economist at Oxford Economics.
The Chicago Business Barometer, also known as the Chicago PMI, dropped to 45.2 in October from 45.7 in the prior month, according to data released Monday.
Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal forecast a 47 reading.
Readings below 50 indicate contraction territory.
The index is produced by the ISM-Chicago with MNI. It is released to subscribers three minutes before its release to the public at 9:45 am Eastern.
The Chicago PMI is the last of the regional manufacturing indices before the national factory data for October is released on Tuesday.
Economist polled by the Wall Street Journal expect the closely-watched Institute for Supply Management’s factory index to barely remain above the 50 breakeven level in October.
