Water Dispute Between Los Angeles and San Diego

Your editorial (July 2), “Trading Water,” on the continuing saga of the Metropolitan Water District’s quest to resolve a family water dispute between the City of Los Angeles and the San Diego County Water Authority ended with a scenario that might have come from an old Western movie script or a Middle East terrorist plot.

The Times suggested that failing a just resolution to the water allocation problem, as perceived by San Diego, that San Diego might embark on a “course of water-supply raiding” threatening the peaceful solution of “other water problems that are of far more importance to all of California.”

San Diego is MWD’s largest customer by virtue of its water needs and its very limited independent local supplier. Being literally at the end of the MWD pipeline system gives cause for some justifiable paranoia in water matters, but we have neither proposed taking hostages nor “water-supply raiding,” to my best knowledge.

What is proposed is that all entities with surplus water or excess water that can be salvaged through water conservation, or water that can be lease-purchased, can be accommodated by water-marketing to have-not water agencies like San Diego.

For this concept to work, there needs to be a willing buyer and a willing seller and the benevolence of a plethora of governmental agencies that have the power to make or break any such deal.

According to Assemblyman Richard Katz. (D-Sepulveda), the Legislature has enacted all the laws necessary over the past seven years to make water trading a reality now. Water trading, yes; water raiding, no.

LAWRENCE HIRSCH

Member, Board of Directors

San Diego County

Water Authority