Slowly but surely the San Diego County Water Authority has scaled back on next year’s proposed water rate increase. Officials initially proposed an 18 percent increase, then lowered their proposal to 12 percent. On Tuesday, they came down on the rate hike again, suggesting to the San Diego City Council an increase of 10.4 percent. That wasn’t good enough for several councilmembers.
We had a line in this weekend’s post about the big Southern California water legal settlement signed yesterday that got some attention and may actually be a story itself. I reported that the settlement had laid the groundwork to allow the San Diego County Water Authority to sell some of its abundance of water to other agencies the Metropolitan Water District serves. If San Diego doesn’t have any buyers among them, Met itself could buy the water. And if Met doesn’t want it, then something really interesting could happen.
A 15-year legal battle between water agencies is finally over. The San Diego County Water Authority and Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles finally signed an agreement Monday ending a battle over the cost to deliver water. The bottom line for San Diego County residents: water bills should not skyrocket in the foreseeable future.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) and the San Diego County Water Authority announced Monday that they have settled a legal dispute spanning 15 years over the exchange of Colorado River water. The agreement ends the long-standing litigation over fluctuating prices Metropolitan charged to the Water Authority to deliver water that the Water Authority purchased from the Imperial Irrigation District in 2003.
Millions of Californians are set to see significant water rate hikes over the next few years, with prices for essential water supplies jumping by double-digit percentage points. In one large city, cumulative increases could see prices jump about 70% just in the next five years.
