Treading Water

In any normal year San Diego County uses about 25% of the 1.2 million acre-feet of water distributed to 27 member agencies by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. San Diego is almost totally reliant on MWD for its supplies. The City of Los Angeles, on the other hand, takes only about 7%, since most of its water comes from the city’s own supply in the Owens Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra.

But if a severe drought struck and MWD was forced to allocate the scarce resource under existing district rules, that ratio would be almost reversed. Los Angeles could draw 27% of the MWD supply and San Diego could take barely 11%. Since MWD provides the bulk of San Diego’s water supply, this arrangement tends to make San Diegans nervous.

This is one reason the San Diego County Water Authority has become something of a maverick in the water world--searching in Imperial County, Northern California and even Colorado for an additional supply of water that it could call its own. Of all the words in the water lexicon, perhaps the most critical is the word firm . A bountiful water supply in most years means nothing if it is not firm, or assured, in dry years. Under the current structure of the Metropolitan Water District, in theory, San Diego’s supplies are decidedly shaky.

In practice there is little likelihood that MWD officials would turn off the tap to San Diego in a drought and give most of the water to Los Angeles and other MWD members with preferential rights. For one thing, no court would permit it, and other sections of state law might not allow it. Even so, MWD leaders have decided that it is prudent to change the state law under which the district is chartered to reflect the reality of today’s water use.

The present allocation formula, which has never been used, is based on how much tax money each MWD member has contributed to the district and the construction of its massive system over the years. As a charter member, Los Angeles has been pouring tax money into the district since 1928. San Diego did not join until 1946, and therefore has a lesser right to MWD water in the event of drought-induced cutbacks.

The MWD board has struggled for more than a year to come up with a new formula that would more accurately reflect actual water use and need in the allocation of supplies during emergencies. Its proposed solution is to limit the application of preferential rights to the first 550,000 acre-feet of MWD’s total supply--the amount of the district’s firm yield from the Colorado River. The MWD board would determine the distribution of any water in excess of the 550,000 acre-feet. Some officials in San Diego County want to do away with the preferential rights altogether, but the county agreed to go along with the proposal of MWD General Manager Carl Boronkay. A special meeting called recently to ratify the plan was canceled, however, when the City of Los Angeles complained that the proposal was being rushed.

“We paid for that system,” one city official said. “What we get in return for that is preferential rights.” The city wants to be certain that it is treated fairly. While Los Angeles has only eight votes on the 51-member MWD board, its legislative delegation in Sacramento could block the legislation needed to effect the change.

It is important that MWD, San Diego County and Los Angeles settle the issue soon, and not just because of theoretical water allocations in the event of a drought far more severe than anyone expects or, more realistically, a succession of drought years. Unless the dispute is resolved, San Diego may follow a course of water-supply raiding that threatens to upset the peaceful solution of other water problems that are of far more importance to all of California.