California is at the edge of another protracted drought, just a few years after one of the worst dry spells in state history left poor and rural communities without well water, triggered major water restrictions in cities, forced farmers to idle their fields, killed millions of trees, and fueled devastating megafires.
The City of San Diego Public Utilities Department conducts regular surveys of its watersheds to monitor and maintain high water quality within those watersheds.
The City recently released its 2020 Watershed Sanitary Survey. Conducted and issued every five years since 1996 as required by California law, the report identifies actual or potential causes of local source water contamination that might adversely affect the quality and treatability of City of San Diego water.
The updated information is used as a basis for future watershed management and planning efforts. City of San Diego tap water meets all state and federal drinking water health standards, the primary standards for treating and monitoring water.
“Development and other activities in our watersheds can have a profound influence on the quality of our water,” said Shauna Lorance, director of the City of San Diego Public Utilities Department. “The Watershed Sanitary Survey is important for identifying potential negative impacts and ways to better protect our watersheds.”
Everything that is on the land, whether a natural feature or a human activity like grazing cattle at this area near the Sutherland Reservoir, is part of the watershed. Photo: City of San Diego
A watershed is an area of land that drains water into a specific body of water. Everything that is on the land, whether a natural feature or a human activity, is part of the watershed. Many places San Diego County residents live, work, and play in are watershed areas.
There are 11 westward draining watersheds in San Diego County. Six are within the City of San Diego: San Dieguito River, Los Peñasquitos, Mission Bay and La Jolla, San Diego Bay, San Diego River, and Tijuana River.
The City of San Diego’s nine water supply reservoirs have a combined capacity of over 550,000 acre-feet and more than 900 square miles of watershed lands tributary to these reservoirs. Local runoff from watersheds captured in City reservoirs accounted for about 11% of total drinking water production from 2015-2020.
Six of San Diego County’s watershed regions lie within the City of San Diego boundaries. Map: City of San Diego
Reservoirs are critical components of the regional water supply system, as water is supplied to nearly two million people in the City of San Diego and neighboring communities. Protecting these water sources is vital to providing healthy and safe drinking water. The public can assist in preventing watershed damage through source reduction and preventing stormwater runoff.
The survey offers recommendations including continuing and expanding public awareness programs to help protect watershed, and implementing projects and programs to improve land management and water quality of source waters. All recommendations will be used for future watershed management and planning efforts.
The full 2020 Watershed Sanitary Survey, as well as past surveys, is available on the City’s website.
Editors Note: The City of San Diego is one of the San Diego County Water Authority’s 24 member agencies working collaboratively with the Water Authority to increase the value, reliability, and safety of water for ratepayers in San Diego County.
The water industry has a visibility problem. Often the only time that water professionals are contacted is when things have gone wrong.
Calls come in when a pipe bursts. Angry emails from a local homeowners’ association detail how sewers are backing up in basements. Lawsuits are filed when contamination is found in drinking water.
If you followed the news, you would think there are only problems and few successes with water infrastructure in the U.S. But that’s not the case. Part of the visibility problem with water infrastructure is that the industry does such a good job of making things work. In most situations things are not falling apart. Contamination is not an issue. Sewage backups are solved or eliminated, and people spend their game day blissfully unaware of the infrastructure keeping their finished basement dry.
These are successes we tell ourselves within our bubble, but they aren’t told to a wider audience. It is time to change that.
There is beauty and art in the engineering of these systems. Whether it is an array of aerators for a new mixing tank, the reflection of the sunrise in an open-air clarifier, or the organized jumble of purple pipe at a water reclamation facility, water infrastructure is not invisible. It’s right there.
Below is a growing and updated list of examples of water infrastructure throughout the U.S. Tag @WWDmag or @BCrossen on Twitter with your pictures of your infrastructure to be included in this ever-evolving and growing list. Or send an email to with the subject line “This is water infrastructure” with your location, facility name and what you admire about your local infrastructure.
A Water & Wastes Digest story said the water industry has a visibility problem with infrastructure. The magazine article featured this San Diego County Water Authority tweet, among others, on April 2, 2021.
State officials are putting farmers in south-central Arizona on notice that the continuing drought means a “substantial cut” in deliveries of Colorado River water is expected next year.
A joint statement issued Friday by the state Department of Water Resources and the Central Arizona Project said an expected shortage declaration “will result in a substantial cut to Arizona’s share of the river, with reductions falling largely to central Arizona agricultural users.”
Landscape designs using the least amount of potable water necessary are greatly encouraged in arid or Mediterranean climates like in San Diego County. It’s an important motivation for homeowners to consider efficiency and sustainability to lower water use, saving a precious resource.
America is one thirsty country. The U.S. consumes 322 billion gallons of water every single day, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The most, 133 billion gallons, goes to thermoelectric power. Next is irrigation at 118 billion gallons a day. The last big category is the 39 billion gallons of water that go to personal consumption. That’s the stuff that cooks the pasta and wets the washcloths and cleans the car tires and pours down the drains of millions of showers, sinks and toilets every second of every day. And the following is just one little drop in that great, big bucket.
In the early 1990s, most bottled water came from small, regional companies. In the ensuing years, control of the market has become concentrated among just a few giant corporations. Today, No. 1 Aquafina and No. 2 Dasani each do more than $1 billion in sales.
The San Diego City Council Tuesday appointed Val Macedo Jr. to the San Diego County Water Authority, giving the business representative for the local chapter of LIUNA a leadership role on the regional water board.
That appointment comes just over two years after his father, Valentine Macedo, who we quoted above, had a dispute with other construction union officials over San Diego’s Pure Water project, one of the largest infrastructure projects the city has pursued in its recent history, which is expected to eventually supply 53 million gallons of drinking water to city residents a day.
In late 2018, when the City Council was wrapping up a construction contract on the project, Macedo wrote to the Council taking issue with a provision he opposed, and that other major construction unions support.
“This requirement gets the City Council involved in an ongoing conflict between certain trades,” Macedo wrote.
Kelvin Barrios, then a Council staffer and now a Laborers employee, passed the letter to his boss, and other union leaders. Barrios went on to run for City Council against now-Councilman Sean Elo-Rivera, before dropping out of the race amid a handful of ethical violations, including failing to disclose that he was paid by the Laborers while still working for the city.
Probably unrelated: Elo-Rivera was the only Council member who did not support Macedo Jr.’s appointment this week.
Of note: Officials at the Water Authority nearly didn’t consider the massive Pure Water project in its accounting of the region’s long-term water needs earlier this year.
At its March 24 virtual meeting, the Santee City Council approved a legal agreement to work collaboratively with the joint powers authority that is overseeing the nearly $700 million program called Advanced Water Purification.
Utah’s winter sports industry may claim the greatest snow on Earth, but for skiers and water watchers alike, there is hardly ever enough powder.
For nearly 50 years, the second-driest state in the nation has been giving natural winter storms an engineered boost to help deepen its snowpack through a program largely funded by state taxpayers, local governments and water conservancy districts.
California could be facing a dry summer after two dry winters, but there shouldn’t be a huge impact on local supplies.
California water officials have already cut in half the amount of water they expect to deliver from the state water project.
That could be a major cut for central valley farmers and other water users that rely heavily on the Sacramento Delta for their water.
