The Olivenhain Municipal Water District continues to reduce demand for imported drinking water by converting additional customer meters within The Lakes Above Rancho Santa Fe community to recycled water for irrigation. This phase included the installation of four new water meters that will measure an anticipated savings of over nine million gallons of imported drinking water each year.
Encinitas, Calif. — Olivenhain Municipal Water District continues to reduce demand for imported drinking water by converting additional customer meters within The Lakes Above Rancho Santa Fe community to recycled water for irrigation.
The Lakes is a community in Rancho Santa Fe that will include 387 homes, large outdoor natural spaces, and several lakes, when fully developed.
The Olivenhain Municipal Water District continues to reduce demand for imported drinking water by converting additional customer meters within The Lakes Above Rancho Santa Fe community to recycled water for irrigation.
The Lakes is a community in Rancho Santa Fe that will include 387 homes, large outdoor natural spaces, and several lakes, when fully developed.
This phase included the installation of four new water meters that will measure an anticipated savings of over nine million gallons of imported drinking water each year. As the entire state continues to face water supply challenges, converting customers to recycled water for irrigation strengthens the local water supply portfolio, reduces treated wastewater flows to the ocean, and reduces the region’s overall demand for imported water.
“OMWD has been proactive about converting customers to recycled water for irrigation for decades,” said OMWD board director Marco San Antonio. “Every customer converted supports the goal of reducing our reliance on imported water, and this conversion is yet another step towards fulfilling that goal.”
OMWD has successfully converted four additional meters within The Lakes community to recycled water for irrigation. By converting the meters to recycled water, OMWD will save over nine million gallons of imported drinking water each year. https://t.co/Jb2nPi3j0F pic.twitter.com/WG1PGKUXpn
— Olivenhain MWD (@OMWD) May 1, 2023
OMWD produces up to two million gallons of recycled water everyday at its 4S Ranch Water Reclamation Facility. Additionally, OMWD is the lead agency of the North San Diego Water Reuse Coalition, a group of nine North County agencies that coordinate across jurisdictional boundaries to share resources and expand the reach of the recycled water distribution system. As a result of their proactive approach, OMWD now serves up to 15 percent of its overall demand from recycled water and continues to identify additional ways to make recycled water available to eligible customers.
(Editor’s Note: Olivenhain Municipal Water District is a public agency providing water, wastewater services, recycled water, hydroelectricity, and operation of Elfin Forest Recreational Reserve. Organized in 1959, OMWD currently serves approximately 87,000 customers over 48 square miles in northern San Diego County, and is one of the San Diego County Water Authority’s 24 member agencies).
The City of San Diego has agreed to return more than $3.7 million to the city’s sewer fund which it took to pay for a citywide conversion to wireless water meters. The refund was made in hopes of ending a lawsuit filed by a ratepayer who said the city was charging the 8,500 sewage customers who do not use city water in order to help pay for the $67 million conversion to Advanced Metering Infrastructure, or AMI. The new meters will allow ratepayers to monitor their current water usage as well as make it easier to check for leaks. At the same time, the city’s water department would benefit in reducing meter reading errors and cut down on employee hours.
The city water department spent $1.8 million more on its “smart meter” program between 2012 and 2015 than the City Council had approved. The kicker? The money went to buy meters from a company that has since told the city and investors about problems with its equipment. In the earliest days of the city’s “smart meter” program, the City Council gave water department officials approval to buy $2.1 million worth of new meters from one company over three years. In the first year of the contract, the water department spent $3 million. Over the next two years it spent another $1 million.
A growing backlog of broken water meter boxes and lids has plagued the San Diego Public Utilities Department — an agency still reeling from months of public outrage following spiking water bill throughout the city. That’s according to a recent report by the independent City Auditor’s Office, which found that agency “mismanagement” led to a backlog of more than 25,000 broken meter cases. The city has 281,500 such devices. The audit report stated: “We found that PUD’s delayed response to box and lid maintenance issues resulted from a lack of management oversight and accountability; a variety of process inefficiencies; and inadequate strategic planning.”
When customers started complaining early last year about spiking water bills, authorities downplayed the situation. Water department officials repeatedly said that leaky toilets, broken sprinklers and the rising cost of water were likely to blame, even as customer complaints flooded into the agency’s public hotline for months. However, a recent analysis by the San Diego Union-Tribune has shown that single-family homes serviced by the city’s water department were collectively overcharged by more than $2 million last year — with some residents receiving bills for tens of thousands of dollars.
There’s a lot the city doesn’t know about the extent of problems with its $67 million “smart” water meter program. But it did know at least two years ago that problems existed, emails released this week show – a fact that conflicts with earlier statements the city made about an April 2016 meeting between water department officials and the company that makes the smart meters. Since 2010, the city has spent roughly $7 million to buy 74,000 Hersey-brand water meters from Atlanta-based Mueller Water Products.
Millions of dollars worth of smart water meters already installed in homes across the city of San Diego could have a glitch that prevents them from relaying water use wirelessly. And for more than two years, the city has no record of trying to fix or address the problem. Last month, NBC 7 Responds and media partner Voice of San Diego first disclosed the “glitch”, which had never been discussed publicly by the Public Utilities Department. A department spokesperson told us the glitch, identified in Hersey Meters, was described as being “minor” and that “no corrective action was required”.
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