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Even though San Diego water customers may be owed hundreds of millions of dollars by the region’s largest water supplier, it will be a long time before anyone sees a dime.

A judge ruled last year that the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California charged too much to deliver water to San Diego from the Colorado River. The judge said Metropolitan owes the San Diego County Water Authority at least $243 million, including legal fees and interest.

Helix Water District customers can now go back to watering their lawns three days a week starting April 6.

The Helix Water Board voted unanimously Wednesday to halt the two-days-only watering in effect since June 2015, when the state mandated that water districts require their customers reduce use by up to 25 percent.

Helix customers may choose which three days to water, but still must limit outdoor irrigation with spray sprinklers to no more than 10 minutes per station per day. That 10-minute limit does not apply to drip irrigation systems, rotating nozzle sprinklers, gear rotor sprinklers and weather-based controllers.

Ventura County supervisors are opposing a proposed rate change by the giant Metropolitan Water District, saying the measure would undermine conservation and is unconstitutional.

Metropolitan now bases rates for water treatment wholly on the volume purchased. The district’s board is set to act next week on separate charges to cover fixed costs of building, running and maintaining its plants.

Despite record-low water savings in February, winter storms in Northern California filled reservoirs and returned the missing snowpack, easing the drought crisis and triggering softer water conservation targets, state water officials said Monday.

While many parts of the state may be headed into a fifth year of drought, the punch of El Niño that landed upstate will help Southern California communities.

 

While El Niño has put a dent in California’s historic drought, conservation efforts by urban water users in the state have tapered off in recent months — a trend reflected in San Diego County.

Regulators announced Monday that residents and businesses didn’t meet Gov. Jerry Brown’s mandatory statewide conservation target of 25 percent — on both a monthly and cumulative basis. The customers failed significantly in February, the most recent month for verified data. It was by far the worst monthly showing since the program began last June.