The San Diego County Water Authority Board of Directors will have a public hearing and vote Thursday about proposed increases of 8.2% or 9.5% in wholesale water rates for 2024. Citing “extraordinary inflationary pressures and depressed water sales,” the board said the proposals are a way to manage cost increases while still protecting ratepayers, ensuring water reliability and maintaining the authority’s credit ratings.
The San Diego County Water Authority Board of Directors will have a public hearing and vote Thursday about proposed increases of 8.2% or 9.5% in wholesale water rates for 2024. Citing “extraordinary inflationary pressures and depressed water sales,” the board said the proposals are a way to manage cost increases while still protecting ratepayers, ensuring water reliability and maintaining the authority’s credit ratings.
If you’re ready to move ahead with plans to create a water-efficient landscape, the San Diego County Fair is a good place to start. There are several award-winning examples of creative low-water use and native plant gardens at the fair’s popular Paul Ecke Jr. Garden Show exhibit area. (The San Diego County Water Authority has partnered with the state’s Save Our Water to sponsor a booth at the exhibit area).
After 18 months of negotiating—and bickering amongst themselves—the three lower Colorado River basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada reached an agreement on how to best conserve the river’s valuable water supply in the near term.
El Niño has arrived, bringing potentially major effects on weather around the world, such as drought and flooding, and possibly setting a new record for the hottest year. Seven years ago an exceptionally strong El Niño took hold in the Pacific Ocean, triggering a cascade of damaging changes to the world’s weather.
California’s two biggest reservoirs are all but full after reaching perilously low levels late last year. Lake Shasta, at 96% full, and Lake Oroville, at 100%, had fallen to around 25% to 30% of their capacity before the state’s historically wet winter rejuvenated them.
Amping up their concerns as a deadline looms, key California legislators today escalated their pushback on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to streamline the Delta water tunnel and other infrastructure projects. The stalemate could become a critical lever while lawmakers haggle with Newsom over the 2023-2024 budget leading up to his June 27 deadline for approving the spending plan.
San Diego officials say they must raise water rates more than previously announced — 19.8% instead of 17.6% — but a smaller portion of the increases would fall on typical single-family homeowners.
City water officials told the City Council Tuesday that the bump up in the proposed increases is being driven primarily by costs for imported water, which makes up 85% to 90% of the city’s supply.
The Helix Water District has been awarded $10.3 million in grant funds by the California Department of Water Resources for the district’s drought resilience and drinking water supply reliability project. The district was one of 26 California agencies, and the only one in San Diego County, to receive a portion of the $217 million in grants awarded in this round of funding.
The price of water is rising across the Southwest as utilities look to cover the cost of the increasingly scarce resource, the infrastructure to treat and distribute it and the search for new supplies.
