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The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is a massive, unresponsive, and insular bureaucracy that lacks transparency and accountability to the ultimate end users, the Ratepayers. This includes homeowners, renters (through pass through rent increases), and commercial and industrial establishments. Rather, as a wholesaler to 26 agencies and another 251 subagencies, MWD and its directors are pressured to limit its rate increase so that these public facing entities do not have to raise rates to a level that reflects the true cost of water, fearing pushback from Ratepayers. MWD and its politically appointed board accommodate these agencies by dumping the increased costs onto property owners by levying a Special Property Tax that is buried in our Secured Property Tax Bill that only comes once a year.  This may be in violation of Prop 13.

A recent CityWatch article, Metropolitan Water District’s Billion Dollar Property Tax, indicated that MWD was proposing to increase this tax to $180 for a million dollar home (0.0018% of assessed value), a more than fivefold increase from the 2024 level of $35 (0.0035%).

Appellate court justices heard arguments Tuesday in the highly watched dispute over whether the state exceeded its authority when it placed the Tulare Lake subbasin on probation last year for failing to come up with an adequate plan to protect the region’s groundwater.

Or, whether a Kings County judge erred by refusing to dismiss the case and issuing a preliminary injunction that has held probationary sanctions at bay all this time. A ruling by the 5th District Court of Appeal is expected “soon,” which could mean two months or longer.

 

A bill with unanimous support is basically a unicorn in today’s divided politics, so California just saw the return of a water-planning unicorn in the form of SB 72 that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Oct. 1.

Prior to being signed, the bill — effectively an update to the California Water Plan that enforces the need for quantifiable water needs reports and water goals — passed through the state’s legislature without any “no” votes.