San Diego’s Bid to Change Water Formula Is Rejected

A judge has rejected a bid by the San Diego County water board to invalidate a regulation that could give the city of Los Angeles the right to take half of San Diego’s water during a drought.

Without comment, San Francisco Superior Court Judge James J. McBride agreed with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California that the drought formula that spells out “preferential rights” for MWD members is clearly defined in the 1931 law that created the regional water wholesaler.

Under the formula, Los Angeles has the right to buy 23% of MWD’s water while San Diego County has the right to only 14%.

The disparity reflects a historical advantage Los Angeles enjoys as a founding member of MWD in the 1920s. San Diego County, by contrast, only joined when forced to do so by President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II.

Currently, Los Angeles buys only 8% of MWD water but San Diego County buys 26%. With little native ground water, San Diego is dependent on MWD for virtually all of its water.

San Diego officials have long feared that during a drought or other water emergency Los Angeles would invoke its right to increase its water purchases, thus depriving San Diego of needed water and devastating its economy.

Those fears increased during the electricity deregulation crisis, when prices skyrocketed in San Diego County while remaining stable in Los Angeles. The then-mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan, condoned the city Department of Water and Power’s policy of demanding top dollar for excess electricity.

In its lawsuit over water, the San Diego County Water Authority claims that the 1931 formula allocating rights according to how much each of MWD’s 26 member agencies has paid to build the system’s massive infrastructure is tilted toward Los Angeles.

As MWD’s biggest and unhappiest customer, San Diego asserts that the formula should be altered to give San Diego more credit for the money spent to purchase water. As San Diego sees it, the county is paying to maintain an MWD water system that will benefit Los Angeles during a drought.

Though unwilling to change the formula to appease San Diego, the MWD board insists that the formula has never been invoked.

“In the end, this was an expensive lawsuit over a theoretical water allocation statute that has never been applied, even in the face of two severe droughts, and that we have no plans to exercise,” said MWD board Chairman Phillip J. Pace.

A San Francisco judge was selected to hear the case because neither San Diego nor MWD trusted a judge in the other’s region. San Diego has vowed to appeal the decision, handed down late last week.