You are now in Media Coverage San Diego County category.

San Diego signed a deal Tuesday to start talking about something that’s never been done before: Sell water to other thirsty states in the Southwest.

The San Diego County Water Authority received a lot of national press recently because it’s probably the only water agency in this Colorado River-dependent region that has claim over more water than its people and industries use. Even The New York Times showed up Tuesday to catch the Water Authority’s general manager, Dan Denham, raise a glass of desalted water with top Colorado River negotiators celebrating their shared interest in creating an interstate water market.

Water leaders from California, Nevada and Arizona gathered at the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant on Wednesday, June 3, to sign an agreement aimed at exploring interstate water exchanges as a way to strengthen long-term water reliability across the Southwest.

The memorandum of understanding was signed June 3 at the plant by officials from the San Diego County Water Authority, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Southern Nevada Water Authority, Arizona Department of Water Resources, Central Arizona Project and Salt River Project.

Even as California is offering to take less water from the drought-shrunken Colorado River, one of the state’s biggest cities that’s long been the most dependent on it curiously now has excess water to sell.

In a good year, San Diego gets barely 8 inches of rain. And not too long ago, the picturesque coastal city was staring down major water supply shortages. It’s notoriously at the end of the line of the Colorado River “straw,” a good three-hour drive from the shrinking river itself. But today, thanks in part to aggressive water recycling and urban and agricultural conservation programs and a big bet made on salt water, San Diego has a surplus and other thirsty nearby cities and states are eager to tap it.

San Diego could sell some of its rights to Colorado River water to Arizona and Nevada under a deal struck Wednesday that could help parched inland states fill a widening gap between water supply and demand.

The San Diego County Water Authority now has a water surplus thanks to a desalination plant the utility opened a decade ago after facing shortages of its own. Water wouldn’t physically move inland, but the utility wouldn’t draw as much from the river as it’s entitled to.

Lake Mead could soon benefit from the nation’s largest desalination plant thanks to an agreement that would allow water agencies in Nevada, Arizona, and California to explore ways to exchange water supplies across the drought-challenged Colorado River Basin.

On Wednesday, the federal government and water agencies in the three states signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a framework for an interstate pilot program that could let agencies in Arizona and Nevada tap San Diego’s Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant.