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Because leaders across this drought-afflicted region all embraced the same innovative idea a decade ago, three separate sewage recycling systems will soon come online in Oceanside, East County and San Diego.

While drought was the main motivator for spending millions to purify sewage into drinking water, local leaders were also spurred by increasing costs for imported water and long-term concerns about the Colorado River.

Poway residents will be paying more for water after the City Council’s Jan. 20 approval of a 9.9% rate increase this year, with another 4% hike each year for the next four years. Additionally, the cost of recycled water is increasing by 23% this year and wastewater costs are scheduled to rise by 3% each year from 2028 through 2030, according to a staff report.

The 2026 rate increases started with the Jan. 21 water bills, said the city’s Director of Finance Craig Schmollinger. The average customer is expected to pay $24.22 per month more, or $48.43 more per bimonthly billing period for water.

What kind of yard does a wildlife biologist create for herself and her family? For Shea O’Keefe, the 2025 WaterSmart Landscape Contest winner for San Dieguito Water District, it’s a yard that has a thoughtful connection to nature.

O’Keefe, a wildlife biologist who does restoration on working lands (think farmland, rangeland and forest land whose owners want to do something for wildlife) for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has gradually created her own miniature version of a wildlife preserve in the suburbs of Encinitas.

Some four miles off the coast, a company is betting it can solve one of desalination’s biggest problems by moving the technology deep below the ocean’s surface.

OceanWell’s planned Water Farm 1 would use natural ocean pressure to power reverse osmosis — a process that forces seawater through membranes to filter out salt and impurities — and produce up to 60 million gallons of freshwater daily. Desalination is energy intensive, with plants worldwide producing between 500 and 850 million tons of carbon emissions annually — approaching the roughly 880 million tons emitted by the entire global aviation industry.

A new analysis says water rates in San Diego must go up another 44.2% between 2028 and 2031 even though the City Council agreed in October to raise them a cumulative 31.3% this year and next.

If the council ends up approving additional hikes that large when they come to a vote next year, the cumulative six-year rate increase would amount to more than 90%.