Authority Backs Water Transport Expansion

Major opposition to a $300-million plan to bring more Northern California water south evaporated Thursday when San Diego water authorities--whose customers would pay the largest portion of the costs--voted overwhelmingly to support the project.

With San Diego in support, the proposal by the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) is expected to be approved at its March meeting. The project would enlarge a major north-south aqueduct in the Antelope Valley to bring in an extra 300,000 acre-feet of water from the Sacramento Delta, to which the MWD has rights but facilities too small to transport the water.

MWD staff officials have argued that construction must begin as soon as possible to avoid shortages in Southern California during dry years through 2006.

San Diego officials had seen far less urgency in the project, saying instead that cheaper alternative supplies might be available from the Colorado River. Because San Diego purchases 30% of MWD’s water, making it the district’s largest customer, its opposition had been considered serious. The ultimate cost of a minimum aqueduct expansion could be as much as $15 an acre-foot per year for county

water users. (An acre-foot is the amount of water used annually by an average family of four.)

But members of the San Diego County Water Authority acted favorably on the plan Thursday after influential longtime member Harry Griffen said that San Diego’s call for delay “has practically no support at all among other (MWD) members.”

John Hennigar, chairman of the authority’s water policy committee, added, “Our (MWD) delegates are telling us we’re beating a dead horse, and it’s time to cut our losses.”

Hans Doe, who along with Griffen and four other delegates represents San Diego on the MWD, said that Northern California interests will never be persuaded to allow more of their water to be diverted south unless MWD acts to take all the water it is now entitled to.

Michael Madigan said the vote does not mean San Diego has given up pressuring MWD to tap potential water sources along the Colorado through conservation and other measures. San Diego has been in the forefront of agencies arguing for negotiations between MWD and the Imperial Irrigation District in El Centro to save as much as 250,000 acre-feet of water a year through improved agricultural irrigation procedures.

A top MWD official told the board Thursday that there has been significant progress toward an agreement with Imperial to carry out conservation measures. Myron Holburt, MWD assistant general manager, said both sides are near completion of a memorandum spelling out details of an up to 50-year agreement. It would call for MWD to pay into a fund that Imperial would use to line canals and improve irrigation piping. The water to be saved would accrue to MWD, and to San Diego as the district’s largest customer.

Holburt said Thursday that the 250,000 acre-feet might be available by 1995, with the first increments delivered as early as 1988. MWD assumptions about adequate water supplies through 2006 count on the Imperial water as well as the additional state water available after aqueduct expansion.