As we previewed on last week’s podcast episode, there’s a big vote coming that has us on the edge of our seats.
San Diego City Council members are set to vote on water rate increases on Tuesday. That increase is driven by the slew of investments our region has made over the years to secure water from a variety of sources.
The mighty Colorado River, which supplies water to cities and farms across Southern California, could again dwindle to dangerously low levels next year.
That’s the finding of a new analysis published earlier this month by a group of prominent scholars. They claim the river is closer than previously thought to running into serious infrastructure complications that could stop water from flowing.
Community members will have one last opportunity on Tuesday to voice their opinions before the San Diego City Council votes on proposed water rate hikes during their council meeting.
The proposed water rate increases could result in a cumulative hike of more than 60% over the next four years. The proposed increases are attributed to several factors, including the cost of importing water, inflation, repairs to aging infrastructure and investments in future water projects.
Amid handwringing at San Diego City Hall over next week’s vote to hike water rates, city analysts dropped a harrowing report revealing how easily the department that handles water and wastewater could collapse without them.
There are whispers that Mayor Todd Gloria’s administration is struggling to get the votes to pass a four-year proposed 63 percent rate hike and 31 percent wastewater rate hike Tuesday. But the city’s independent budget analysts sharply warned against doing anything that would starve the Public Utilities Department of more revenue.
California lawmakers started the year signaling they were ready to get tough on data centers, aiming to protect the environment and electricity ratepayers. Nine months later, they have little to show for it.
Of four data center bills in play, two never made it out of the Legislature, including one that would have required data centers to publicize their power use and another that would have provided incentives for them to use more clean energy.
As the San Diego City Council prepares to make major water rate hikes, city staff clearly want weary councilmembers to blame the San Diego County Water Authority and not the wastewater recycling project the city is building.
Tuesday the City Council will vote on a 63 percent water rate hike and 31 percent wastewater rate increase over the next four years. City Hall is abuzz with chatter that there may not be enough votes to pass the rate increases, which could set in motion an unpredictable series of events. The city pays the Water Authority about $30 million per month for water. The Water Authority’s bills to the city will come due no matter what. But if elected leaders refuse to raise rates, San Diego’s utilities department can’t collect the money it needs to function.
The San Diego City Council is set to vote next week on a series of water rate increases that could raise the average household bill by about $18 per month. Rates would then continue climbing by roughly the same amount each year for the next three years.
That’s a 63% increase over four years. But City Council President Joe LaCava said support for the plan might be slipping.
California’s largest drinking water supplier is trying to turn the page.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which imports and sells water to 19 million people in Los Angeles and the surroundings, earlier this month zeroed in on Shivaji Deshmukh, the current general manager of the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, to replace retiring General Manager Deven Upadhyay, according to three people with knowledge whom POLITICO granted anonymity to discuss ongoing internal deliberations.
San Diego County Water Authority General Manager Dan Denham was seated today as the Water Authority’s newest representative on the board of directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
Denham brings more than two decades of water industry expertise, as well as a deep knowledge of the relationship between Metropolitan and the Water Authority. He succeeds Gail Goldberg, who served on Metropolitan’s 38-member board since 2019.
Following several years of planning and investment, the City of Antioch has reached a climate-resilient milestone: a new brackish water desalination facility near its existing water treatment plant.
The facility, supported by $10 million in Proposition 1 desalination grant funding from the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and a $60 million low-interest loan from the California Water Boards’ Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, will produce up to 6 million gallons per day of treated drinking water —an important boost to regional supply reliability amid rising salinity in the San Joaquin River.
