You are now in San Diego County category.

With decision time approaching for water districts being asked to fund the most expensive water project in California history, the head of California’s largest water wholesaler Monday warned there is no room for subsidies or withdrawal from participation. “All of us have to work together to make this work, and all of us need to pay our share,” said Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Southern California Metropolitan Water District (MWD).

Every day, I walk into the kitchen, turn on the faucet, and clean drinking water magically appears. It’s a miracle, really, and I’ll bet, like me, you don’t even think about it — the water always flows. Even in the years of drought we endured, good local water management and conservation got us through the tough times. The water always flows. But not all of Orange County’s water is from local groundwater sources.

The Orange County Water District’s mission is to provide the 2.4 million people it serves with a reliable, adequate, high-quality water supply at the lowest reasonable cost in an environmentally responsible manner. Because of its dependence on climate-challenged, heavily regulated imported water, OCWD’s policy is to develop new local and drought-proof sources of water. In the process of doing this, OCWD has identified the proposed Huntington Beach Desalination Project as the single largest source of new local drinking water supply available to the region.

San Diego Unified School District is expected to announce new water testing policies Thursday in connection to the lead-tainted water found on several local campuses. The three-year program will involve testing all water outlets used for human consumption at district facilities. The sampling project will include early childhood education facilities and central offices, which were excluded from testing earlier this year. Water was at tested at 207 schools on district property beginning in April. Results showed 19 percent of the schools had some level of lead in the water.