The Colorado River is healthier and Lake Mead is rising.
That news is welcome but brings little joy in San Diego’s water world at the moment.
A lawsuit between agencies has been authorized.
Legislation that could block two small districts from getting cheaper water elsewhere hit a bump in the road in Sacramento.
And a controversial hire by a water district that supplies San Diego County with water is being eyed warily by some officials.
First, the good news. The massive snowpack from the winter storms has nourished the ailing Colorado River, a major source of water for San Diego and much of the Southwest.
The bounty is such that the federal government has eased water cuts in various states. (Those reductions didn’t affect San Diego, which over the years built adequate supplies through water purchases, infrastructure projects and recycling programs — at considerable cost.)
That takes some pressure off the immediate need to reallocate the Colorado’s water, but experts warn not for long. The river flow is still well below what it once was and climate-change-fueled droughts and historic overuse means changes can’t be avoided. What that means for San Diego is uncertain.
In the here and now, the battle within the San Diego County Water Authority continues to rage. The Fallbrook Public Utilities District and Rainbow Municipal Water District are taking more steps to get out from under the regional agency’s umbrella.
Leaders and ratepayers in the small, largely agricultural districts say their water costs are too high and are unsustainable, especially with more increases expected in the future.
Earlier this month, a SDCWA board majority authorized a lawsuit that aims to stop the two districts from hooking up to the Eastern Municipal Water District, a Riverside County agency that is offering water at a lower cost.
The authority says water rates will rise in other member-districts because of the move. Rainbow and Fallbrook would pay a multimillion-dollar exit fee that is supposed to cover those increases for five years.
The SDCWA is actually targeting the lawsuit at another government agency that approved the plan for Rainbow and Fallbrook to make the switch. Apparently, the authority wouldn’t be directly suing its two disgruntled members, but they will be involved in the litigation because they would be affected by the outcome.
SDCWA maintains that the agency, the Local Agency Formation Commission, did not conduct an adequate review under the California Environmental Quality Act on the impact of the districts’ moves, specifically regarding the State Water Project upon which Eastern relies.
LAFCO officials counter they have done what they are supposed to do according to the law.
It’s a tangled web, for sure.
The authority’s primary concern is not how this would affect the State Water Project. For one thing, SDCWA receives virtually no water from the State Water Project.
Increasing water rates are always a worry and they’re very high across the county, especially in Rainbow and Fallbrook.
But a main issue is that SDCWA can ill afford to lose more water sales. Those sales have been plummeting over the years largely because of a tremendous public conservation ethic that took water managers by surprise.
Beyond potentially losing sales to Rainbow and Fallbrook, the city of San Diego will begin dramatically cutting its water purchase through the authority after the city’s wastewater recycling system comes online. Known as Pure Water, the system is expected to launch in 2025 and provide nearly half the city’s water by 2035.
The city is by far the largest water-purchasing member of SDCWA and, by virtue of a weighted vote, its most powerful.
Shrinking water sales puts further pressure on the authority to raise rates to pay off billions in debt from moves to secure water supplies over the years, including a desalination plant and increased storage capacity.
Rainbow and Fallbrook say they get little benefit from much of that, particularly the expensive desalinated water.
Litigation aside, LAFCO’s decision needs to be confirmed by voters in the Fallbrook and Rainbow jurisdictions. District officials recently started the process to hold the elections on Nov. 7. There had been discussion of scheduling them for the March primary.
The speedup is an attempt to get the vote in before state legislation changing the rules would take effect.
At the city of San Diego’s request, Assemblymember Tasha Boerner, D-Encinitas, carried Assembly Bill 399, which would require voters countywide to approve the two districts’ exit. San Diego argues their shift to the Riverside agency would affect virtually all county residents, so they should have a say.
That measure is pending in the state Senate and would need a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to become law in time to change the election process. Should that happen, don’t be surprised if AB 399 is challenged in court.
However, the countywide election costs would have to be paid by the state and that may slow the bill in the Legislature, according to the Voice of San Diego.
Meanwhile, separate from the Rainbow-Fallbrook dispute, the local water world was jolted by a recent development in Imperial County.
Some context first: Under an agreement hatched nearly 20 years ago, the Imperial Irrigation District sends water to the San Diego authority, which financed conservation measures to help free up the water.
Both the IID and the water authority had long-running disputes with the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which until relatively recently controlled much of San Diego’s water. The battles subsided after, among other things, the retirement of Metropolitan’s longtime general manager, Jeffrey Kightlinger.
The Imperial district, which has some of the strongest water rights in the West, recently hired Kightlinger as a consultant.
Suffice it to say, San Diego water officials, some of whom still view Kightlinger as something of a Darth Vader figure, will be keeping a wary eye on where that leads.
What they said
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., discussing Donald Trump’s indictments with the Huffington Post.
“I think it shows that politicians lie, and [people] know they’re lying. The liar knows that people know he’s lying, and the people that are being lied to know they’re being lied to. That is political reality in 2023.”
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