President Donald Trump’s top Colorado River official visited San Diego Wednesday to say the president sees “real potential” in developing more plants that make drinking water using the ocean – right off the California coast.
That’s a problem for environmentalists, who say desalination plants are environmentally harmful, energy intensive and costly.
The federal government and water agencies in Arizona, California and Nevada signed a landmark agreement Wednesday to explore ways to exchange supplies across the drought-challenged Colorado River Basin.
The goal is to find ways to work across state borders on desalination, recycled water and other projects to ensure adequate water supplies for 43 million residents in three states.
Even as California is offering to take less water from the drought-shrunken Colorado River, one of the state’s biggest cities that’s long been the most dependent on it curiously now has excess water to sell.
In a good year, San Diego gets barely 8 inches of rain. And not too long ago, the picturesque coastal city was staring down major water supply shortages. It’s notoriously at the end of the line of the Colorado River “straw,” a good three-hour drive from the shrinking river itself. But today, thanks in part to aggressive water recycling and urban and agricultural conservation programs and a big bet made on salt water, San Diego has a surplus and other thirsty nearby cities and states are eager to tap it.
Las Vegas has signaled interest in buying San Diego’s desalination water, the latest development in what will surely be a complex agreement permitting cities to trade water over state lines.
Last week, the board of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which provides water to the Las Vegas metropolitan area, officially signaled it wants to talk interstate water transfers by signing onto a memorandum of understanding proposed by the San Diego County Water Authority. San Diego is keen to sell off water it doesn’t need but is obligated to buy, like de-salted ocean water from a desalination plant in Carlsbad.
Southern Nevada is now looking to the Pacific Ocean to ease its water woes.
In a vote Thursday, the Southern Nevada Water Authority board approved a memorandum of understanding that allows General Manager John Entsminger to hammer out a first-of-its-kind water transfer deal with the San Diego County Water Authority. In a region where growth could outpace permanent water supplies in the next few decades, that matters.
Lake Mead is projected to hit an all-time low by summer 2027, according to new projections released by federal authorities.
The reservoir is forecast to drop to 1,020 feet in July 2027, 20 feet lower than its previous record low of 1,040 feet in July 2022. That year, long-sunken boats and once-submerged rocks emerged from the water.
Just off Palm Canyon Drive in Borrego Springs, a dead honey mesquite tree remains rooted in the hot sand. It’s lifeless but not yet useless — not to the creatures that find shade under its branches or the plants that count on its nutrients.
Over the last year, mesquite has been at the heart of a growing water war in Borrego Springs, a tiny but scenic town deep in the San Diego County desert that for years seemed blessed with a rare combination of blazing sun and a font of available groundwater.
San Diego County has long been known as a place that solves hard problems with innovation – and our region’s approach to water is no exception.
While much of the West grapples with drought and water insecurity, our region spent decades preparing and investing for a dry future. That strategy is now paying off in new ways: In the past few weeks, the San Diego County Water Authority approved two landmark water‑transfer partnerships that not only help our neighbors but also deliver real financial benefits for local ratepayers.
San Diego’s water portfolio has positioned the region to do something rare for a major U.S. city: share its hard-won supply with neighbors still battling drought. Negotiations are underway for Arizona and Nevada to tap part of San Diego County’s Colorado River allocation in return for covering the operating costs of the massive Carlsbad Desalination Plant.
The proposal would leverage years of local investments in desalination, storage and water rights to create a regional safety net — one that could deliver water to roughly half a million people in neighboring states during dry spells while keeping San Diego’s system stable and affordable.
The new data center proposed for a quiet city about 115 miles east of San Diego came across people’s radars in different ways.
For patrons of the deli on West Aten Road, it was the white “Not In My Backyard” signs jutting out of lawns. For local irrigation district workers, it was something called an “electric service application.”
