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Southern California homeowners have seen their water rates go up almost 400 percent in 10 years. Now another increase voted on by the Metropolitan Water District will raise rates on its prices for 2017 and 2018.

Jason Foster with the San Diego Water Authority says those prices will get passed on to retail water agencies in the San Diego region and then come out of the wallet of local residents and businesses. “It’s undoubtedly going to be felt by customers throughout San Diego County,” said Foster.

It’s been 25 years since the San Diego County Water Authority decided to broadly diversify its supplies. The authority’s experiences dealing with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California during a severe drought led officials to believe they urgently needed additional sources of water to avoid disaster in a future drought. This triggered a harsh response from the giant water wholesaler. Upset that its largest customer was publicly questioning MWD’s trustworthiness, MWD paid $400,000 to a public relations company for what The Los Angeles Times called a “clandestine effort to discredit San Diego County water leaders.”

For the past few months, we’ve used the KPBS Drought Tracker to tell you how much rain and snow El Niño has been bringing to California. Now that we’ve reached the end of what turned out to be a fairly average wet season, where does California’s drought stand now?

We’ve limited our focus to California’s wettest months, which stretch from October to the beginning of April. We could still see some rain in coming weeks, but California’s traditionally defined wet season is now over.

The Santa Fe Irrigation District is going through its rate-setting process right now and an eight-page notice was recently sent out to all customers on what is being proposed and how they can participate in the process — including how to oppose the increases.

Santa Fe Irrigation District Manager Michael Bardin visited the Rancho Santa Fe Association board meeting on April 7 as the district continues its outreach process on the proposed raise in rates.