Tough, and Crucial, Water Issue

The San Diego County Water Authority has announced a tentative agreement to buy as much as 300,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water a year from the giant Imperial Irrigation District. The deal, if consummated, will be a historic one with considerable benefit for the future of water supply throughout California.

But the accord means nothing unless San Diego is able to bring in the water from the Colorado River. And the only way to do that is to use the Colorado River Aqueduct of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. For the past year, San Diego and the MWD have been involved in often-bitter negotiations over the terms for San Diego’s renting of space in the aqueduct.

It appeared San Diego and the MWD were close to agreement late last week, but the talks broke off. Neither side would publicly discuss prospects for future negotiations. But this water transfer is too important to all of California to allow it to founder on the details of transporting the water. The San Diego-Imperial transfer is important because it would set a pattern for other water trades from agricultural regions to urban areas, where growth is outpacing available water supplies.

With a water supply of its own, San Diego would be free of fear of severe shortages in droughts. The county now gets about 90% of its water from the MWD, which wholesales to 27 member agencies throughout Southern California. Because San Diego is an MWD junior member, it could lose as much as half its supply in a drought before original members such as Los Angeles would suffer shortages.

Moreover, the San Diego-Imperial transfer is a key part of a program to demonstrate to other Colorado River Basin states that California is capable of living within its legal allocation of 4.4 million acre-feet a year. For years, the state has drawn as much as 5.3 million acre-feet from the Colorado, tapping the surplus waters of other basin states. But those surpluses are running out and California is under intense pressure to live within its allocation.

There has been talk of throwing the San Diego-MWD negotiations to the state Legislature for solution. That wild-card alternative might wind up making everyone unhappy. The Southern California interests are far better off settling this dispute on their own.