Encinitas, Calif. — Olivenhain Municipal Water District’s Board of Directors accepted at its March 17 meeting the Government Finance Officers Association’s Distinguished Budget Presentation Award. The award was presented in recognition of OMWD’s budget for Fiscal Years 2021 and 2022. This is the nineteenth consecutive year OMWD has received this recognition.
March 17, 2021 – All three major rating agencies – S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch – have affirmed the San Diego County Water Authority’s strong credit ratings, which will help the Water Authority optimize its debt portfolio and minimize the cost of financing important water reliability projects. The reports cited the Water Authority’s strategic management, its conservative approach to water sales projections, and the benefits of the Water Authority’s rate case litigation that recently resulted in $44.4 million being refunded to local retail water agencies – among many other factors.
Encinitas, Calif. — Olivenhain Municipal Water District invites residents with water-efficient gardens to enter the 2021 WaterSmart Landscape Contest. The winning landscape will receive $250. The deadline to apply is May 14, and applications are available at www.landscapecontest.com.
Encinitas, Calif. — To encourage water conservation and reduce runoff that can carry pollutants into local waterways and beaches, Olivenhain Municipal Water District has partnered with neighboring water districts—San Dieguito Water District, Santa Fe Irrigation District, and Carlsbad Municipal Water District—to offer discounted rain barrels to area residents.
March 8, 2021 – The San Diego County Water Authority’s draft 2020 Urban Water Management Plan was released for public review today. The plan highlights how regional investments in a “water portfolio approach” to supply management and a sustained emphasis on water-use efficiency mean that San Diego County will continue to have sufficient water supplies through the 2045 planning horizon — even during multiple dry years.
Encinitas, Calif. — Fourth-grade students living or attending school in Olivenhain Municipal Water District’s service area are invited to enter its 28th annual poster contest. The contest is held in participation with other North County water agencies, and will accept entries until April 5. This year’s theme is “Love Water, Save Water.”
As part of his efforts to create a more sustainable future for all of us, Mayor Todd Gloria today publicly released a new analysis of San Diego’s future water needs that indicates that the City will develop more than 50% of its water locally by 2045, in large part due to the Pure Water recycling program. This will be a dramatic increase in local water supply, which currently requires the City to purchase 85% to 90% of its water from imported sources.
To assist customers with costs associated with leak repairs and to help conserve our most precious resource – water, Sweetwater Authority is offering rebates of up to $75 for repairs made in March 2021. The special month-long rebate is in celebration of the national Fix a Leak Week, which serves as an annual reminder to check household plumbing fixtures and irrigation systems for leaks.
An annual contest during a pandemic is not an easy thing to conduct. With students challenged in the classroom, mostly learning from home, teachers’ time is stretched thin.
The San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors today announced a plan to distribute a rebate of $44.4 million to its 24 member agencies across the region after receiving a check for that amount from the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to pay legal damages and interest.
The money resulted from the Water Authority’s decade-long rate case litigation in state Superior Court seeking to compel MWD to set legal rates and repay overcharges. The Water Authority won several critical issues in cases covering 2011-2014 and was deemed the prevailing party, which means the agency is also owed legal fees and charges in addition to the recent damages and interest payment from MWD.
The court rulings will also help avoid future overcharges and thereby minimize future disputes over MWD’s unlawful Water Stewardship Rate for transporting the Water Authority’s independent water supplies through MWD facilities. Those charges – if they had continued – would have cost San Diego County residents more than $500 million over the life of the Water Authority’s water delivery contract with MWD.
“This day has been a long time coming,” said Water Authority Board Chair Gary Croucher. “We never wanted to litigate these issues – but if we had not had the courage to do so, MWD would still be collecting the illegal fees and we would not have money to give back to local retail water agencies across the region.”
Per today’s decision by the Water Authority’s Board, the $44.4 million will be returned to member agencies in proportion to their overpayments between 2011-2014. The Water Authority does not have a say in how member agencies use the refunds. The amount of legal fees and costs owed to the Water Authority is yet to be determined.
In addition to damages and interest, the rate case lawsuits generated other substantial benefits, such as requiring an increase in the Water Authority’s preferential rights to MWD water by approximately 100,000 acre-feet a year, equivalent to about twice the annual production of the $1 billion Carlsbad Desalination Project.
In February 2020, the Water Authority’s Board of Directors voted to dismiss certain issues from the litigation after securing more than $350 million in local project subsidy benefits for the San Diego region. In doing so, the Water Authority acknowledged the MWD Board action to stop imposing its Water Stewardship Rate for transporting the Water Authority’s independent supplies, thus resolving for now that issue in future rate years.
As the lawsuits wind down, the Water Authority is working collaboratively with MWD member agencies across Southern California to update MWD’s long-term water resource and financial plans. MWD’s Integrated Resources Plan, known as the IRP, will be the agency’s roadmap for the future. The Water Authority is advocating for inclusion of updated data and plans by many MWD member agencies to develop local water supplies such as the Water Authority and its member agencies have done over the past two decades and will continue to do in the future.
Sweetwater Authority Logo 2019