Sale of Water to San Diego

Columnist Bill Boyarsky is right when he writes, “You wouldn’t expect leaders of the esteemed Metropolitan Water District of Southern California . . . to engage in such a grubby enterprise” as looking through public records to see if there is a relationship between lobbying dollars spent and legislation passed (Jan. 15). Normally that’s something we’d expect reporters and columnists to do as watchdogs for the public trust.

But the rest of Boyarsky’s column is all wrong. It wasn’t MWD that hired a firm to research public records; it was a partnership of MWD member agencies--acting independently. This Partnership for Regional Water Reliability was formed to protect the interests of its 12 million consumers, who don’t want to see their reliability decreased or their water rates increased solely to benefit customers in San Diego County.

The partnership is not opposed to the proposed sale of water from Imperial County farmers to the San Diego County Water Authority. In fact, we’re heartened that both MWD and the Water Authority boards have endorsed a framework that may allow that water to move without harm to MWD’s other member agencies.

Boyarsky notes that these now out-of-date documents arrived at his office earlier this month courtesy of the San Diego County Water Authority. Perhaps a better column would have been about the Water Authority, which has spent more than a half-million dollars of public money on public relations and lobbying firms in an attempt to get these kinds of misstatements in print and blamed on MWD.

WAYNE A. CLARK, Chairman

Partnership for Regional Water

Reliability, Fountain Valley