Slowly but surely the San Diego County Water Authority has scaled back on next year’s proposed water rate increase. Officials initially proposed an 18 percent increase, then lowered their proposal to 12 percent. On Tuesday, they came down on the rate hike again, suggesting to the San Diego City Council an increase of 10.4 percent. That wasn’t good enough for several councilmembers.
San Diego County’s cash-strapped water authority is considering a plan that could remove a discount it gives to local farmers — something farmers claim could put them out of business. The authority gives a roughly 25% discount to about 1,000 farmers, who grow everything from flowers to avocados. Critics say removing the discount is shortsighted because it threatens to kill off a customer class the water authority can’t afford to lose. At the same time, rates for other customers may increase to cover the authority’s costs.
In late 2024, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis produced some eye-catching numbers about our region. It found our gross domestic product (GDP) had reached roughly $262 billion. That’s bigger than 25 U.S. states and countries like Greece, Hungary and Morocco. It’s proof the path San Diego has been on over the last 30 years – a diversified economy that supports entrepreneurs and working families alike – has had positive results. Yet that success was not always a given.
We had a line in this weekend’s post about the big Southern California water legal settlement signed yesterday that got some attention and may actually be a story itself. I reported that the settlement had laid the groundwork to allow the San Diego County Water Authority to sell some of its abundance of water to other agencies the Metropolitan Water District serves. If San Diego doesn’t have any buyers among them, Met itself could buy the water. And if Met doesn’t want it, then something really interesting could happen.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the San Diego County Water Authority announced Monday that they have settled a legal dispute spanning 15 years over the exchange of Colorado River water. The agreement ends the long-standing litigation over fluctuating prices Metropolitan charged to the Water Authority to deliver water that the Water Authority purchased from the Imperial Irrigation District in 2003.
A 15-year legal battle between water agencies is finally over. The San Diego County Water Authority and Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles finally signed an agreement Monday ending a battle over the cost to deliver water. The bottom line for San Diego County residents: water bills should not skyrocket in the foreseeable future.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) and the San Diego County Water Authority announced Monday that they have settled a legal dispute spanning 15 years over the exchange of Colorado River water. The agreement ends the long-standing litigation over fluctuating prices Metropolitan charged to the Water Authority to deliver water that the Water Authority purchased from the Imperial Irrigation District in 2003.
A bitter 15-year legal battle over water costs came to an end Monday, with leaders of the San Diego County Water Authority and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California signing an agreement establishing the price that will be paid for delivering supplies. Managers and board members of the two agencies said that the dispute persisted for years because of inflexible positions, but that negotiations over the last year made possible a comprehensive agreement. They said ending the legal fight will enable greater collaboration among the agencies to improve their finances and move water where it’s needed.
The Colorado River’s water future was a major topic on the agenda at the inaugural meeting of the Metropolitan’s Subcommittee on Imported Water, where Bill Hasencamp, Manager of Colorado River Resources, delivered an update on the ongoing post-2026 guidelines negotiations. These discussions will set the course for managing the Colorado River’s dwindling resources at a time when water reliability is more critical than ever.
Many of California’s reservoirs have filled nearly to capacity this year with runoff from the ample snowpack in the Sierra Nevada. But the situation is very different along the Colorado River, another vital water source for Southern California, where a very dry spring has shrunk the amount of runoff streaming into reservoirs. The latest forecast from the federal Colorado Basin River Forecast Center shows that the river’s flows into Lake Powell will probably be about 46% of average over the next three months.
