San Diego County’s water world hasn’t had much good news lately, with looming budget problems and whopping rate increases.
Well, here’s some: The state’s new mandatory water conservation plan won’t require big reductions locally.
That’s due mostly to decades of spending on recycling, desalination, storage, conservation and imported supplies.
Just four of the San Diego County Water Authority’s 23 member agencies face any cutbacks at all — and they have many years to reach their goals.
The San Dieguito Water District faces the largest reduction of 6.9 percent. That’s followed by the Olivenhain Municipal Water District (6.4 percent), Carlsbad Municipal Water District (6 percent) and the Santa Fe Irrigation District (3.6 percent).
There will be additional costs likely for all agencies because the sweeping plan includes detailed reporting and data-collection requirements. That may be more of a burden for smaller agencies than larger ones with more bureaucracy already in place, such as the city of San Diego.
Big or small, any new costs won’t be welcome among the SDCWA umbrella group, which already is expected to consider raising rates on by around 15 percent later this month. Most, if not all, of those increases may be ed on to individual customers.
The authority is facing a substantial budget shortfall resulting in large part from the investments that now apparently have spared its from more harsh impacts of the new conservation plan that will be felt elsewhere in the state.
The problem, ironically, is partially the result of local customers significantly reducing water consumption for decades. That wasn’t anticipated by the water authority, which is now awash in water that it figured on selling to member agencies to help pay off the costly investments. SDCWA is seeking to find markets to unload some of its supplies and recoup some revenue.
That situation isn’t going away, but at least it won’t be compounded by having to make significant cuts in water use.
“It’s no surprise so many of our member agencies are already in compliance with this new plan,” Dan Denham, water authority general manager, said in a statement.
“It shows how our strategic investments in developing our local water supplies continue to provide water security and benefit our region.”
Under the plan approved unanimously by the five-member State Water Resources Control Board on July 3, some agencies in California will be required to cut water usage by more than 30 percent. That’s a lot, but a renegotiated timeline means that the goal might not have to be reached for 16 years, which, in theory, suggests cuts could come at about 2 percent a year.
But the plan sets goals tailored to each agency. For instance, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power also has made significant gains in conservation and would not need to achieve its first reduction of 6 percent until 2035, according to the Los Angeles Times. Other areas, such as the city of Bakersfield, would need to cut back 25 percent by 2030 to stay in compliance.
The plan is a significant departure from past mandatory, once-size-fits-all cuts during droughts. This system is more flexible, taking into past investments, conservation practices, demographics and regional variations, such as treating hotter inland areas differently than milder coastal regions.
The cuts apply to urban water agencies and not agricultural districts, some of which also are embarking on separate conservation plans. The plan approved this month applies to the water utilities and not households, but the reductions may be felt by individual customers.
While most SDWCA and many other agencies across the state essentially can stand pat through 2040, that didn’t appear to be the case initially. The original plan called for deeper, faster reductions.
A report by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office in January criticized that plan as costly, unrealistic and “unnecessarily complex.” Water agencies rebelled and after subsequent negotiations, the cuts and timelines were relaxed.
Not everyone was happy with the outcome.
“The State Water Resources Control Board has decided to kick the can of California’s water future down the road at a time when we can least afford such inaction,” Assemblymember Laura Friedman, D-Burbank, told CalMatters after the board vote, adding that California must invest more in water efficiency or be forced to spend billions on wastewater recycling and desalination.
Friedman authored one of the bills that required the mandatory conservation rules.
More than a third of suppliers serving about 42 percent of the state’s population will not need to change their water use to meet the standards under the new plan — up from 18 percent under the previous version, according to state data cited by CalMatters.
The Pacific Institute was among environmental organizations that expressed disappointment in the conservation rollbacks, but ed the approach.
“I do think it’s a good framework,” Heather Cooley, director of research at the Pacific Institute, told the Times. “But I continue to think that we have far more opportunity across the state to reduce water use and to help prepare our communities for more extremes — more extreme droughts, hotter temperatures, all of the things that we’re already seeing and that are going to get worse.”
Much of the state plan is driven by concerns over global warming leading to increased water scarcity — despite interspersing wet years. That, along with overuse, has depleted the Colorado River, which provides water for some 40 million people in seven states and Mexico.
That’s where San Diego gets much of its water. River stakeholders and the federal government already have acted to take less water from the Colorado, though a broader pact to divvy up the river is expected in a couple of years.
That may do more to shape San Diego’s water outlook than the new state conservation plan.
