Environment Report: San Diego ‘Better Have My Money’
EM - News Moderator 
The San Diego City Council’s debate over whether to raise water rates on 1.4 million people Tuesday promises to be brutal. San Diego’s independent budget analysts last week answered the question: What happens if City Council doesn’t raise rates? The answer was bad: The Public Utilities Department cuts 30 percent of its budget and cuts staff or defaults on loans.
There’s another question that deserves a look just in case stuff really goes haywire. San Diego City Councilmember Marni von Wilpert was so ticked off at the San Diego County Water Authority for its spiking prices back in January, she suggested the city stop paying its water bills.
What happens if it does? The Water Authority provides the city with 85 to 90 percent of its water resources. Would, or even could, the Water Authority shut off the tap?
“I want to be clear that we will not shut off water. If they order it, we will provide it,” Dan Denham, the Water Authority’s general manager, wrote me on Friday.
I didn’t think shutting the tap was physically possible. The Water Authority manages a series of huge pipes called aqueducts that transport Colorado River water (and sometimes water from the Sierra Nevada mountains in northern California) south to San Diego. But one of those aqueducts ends in the San Vicente Reservoir, which the city owns.
The question maybe seems silly, but it begs to be asked in a world where the systems we rely on every day to survive are often out of sight and taken for granted. It’s similar to August of 2020 when the city was contemplating whether to cut another contract with San Diego Gas and Electric, its monopoly grid builder. There was dissent among the City Council then and many wondered, if we don’t go through with this, will the company shut the power off? SDG&E at that time also said, no, we won’t.
I pressed Denham a bit more. Technically, he said, San Diego can only lay claim to about 21 percent of the water in San Vicente reservoir. The Water Authority unilaterally controls all other connection points on the distribution system to the city, he said. There’s no ability to take water off the regional aqueduct system without the Water Authority, Denham said.
There are potions of San Diego’s service area that are shut off from its reservoirs, meaning their service is entirely reliant on the Water Authority. Maybe not such a silly question, then.
At least, the Water Authority promised to keep the dihydrogen monoxide flowing no matter what the City Council decides Tuesday. But they’ll certainly keep charging San Diego for it – and then some.
When I began my research for this article, I didn’t know the Water Authority had such a hardcore late fee policy. It reads a lot like, to quote from the book of Rihanna, “Don’t act like you forgot. I call the shots, shots, shots,” to its 22 member agencies when it comes to getting paid.
Bills are due by 2 p.m. on the 10th business day of the month. Miss that and delinquent bills start accruing a 2 percent late fee charge for each month they go unpaid. That’d be a $552,000 late fee on the city’s $27.6 million August water bill, for example. The city would basically be purchasing a condo on the San Diego real estate market per month if it misses one bill.
“If the City needs financial assistance, I encourage them to talk with us directly so we can look for solutions together,” Denham, the general manager wrote me.
A water bill is comprised of two parts: A charge for the amount of water ordered, a cost that goes up and down with use, and a separate, fixed charge usually to support the cost of infrastructure (pipes, pumps, treatment).
Denham suggested the city order less water and instead use more banked in reservoirs as storage to reduce expenses. Except, the city would still owe a portion of its bill that pays for infrastructure.
San Diego is the Water Authority’s biggest customer by far. If it stopped paying its bills, the Water Authority would have a similar financial problem the city’s water department faces now with its rate hikes at stake.
“The loss of water sales revenue to the Water Authority in the $20M range would be material and have a compounding impact on cash flow, debt service payments, regional system operations, future rate increases to all member agencies and importantly health and human safety,” Denham wrote.
He threw in a kind of eerie warning at the end.
“Sustained nonpayment of water ordered would cause the Board to consider all legal remedies – obviously, a scenario that we hope never materializes,” wrote Denham.
Step Right Up and Get Your Solutions: Politifest 2025 Is this Weekend
Join me this Saturday as we put local thinkers and idea makers to the test on solving some of San Diego’s greatest problems.
At 10:30 a.m., we’ll have former IBWC Commissioner Maria Elena-Giner join a panel alongside important voices from Baja California’s engineering and academic spaces to present solutions to the Tijuana River sewage crisis
We’ll also try to tackle one of the city’s other most expensive problems: The cost of energy. That’s at 12:45 p.m. There’s plenty more – you won’t want to miss Scott Lewis’ panel on resolving the cost of water.
In Other News
- Speaking of water systems that are not alright, experts say the Colorado River – the source the city and the Water Authority are bickering over – could again reach dangerously low levels next year. Climate change and over use are drying up the critical resource seven U.S. states and northern Mexico rely upon. (KPBS)
- I joined KPBS’ Tammy Murga and inewsource’s Philip Salata on our first, perhaps of many, environment reporter Roundtable on KPBS last week. The topic: the ever content-giving Tijuana River sewage crisis.
- San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer announced via Instagram — while dripping from a beach dip — that she’d re-pursue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to declare the Tijuana River Valley a Superfund site. Former President Biden’s EPA declined that request the first time last year.
- Scientists are working on another forecast system for dust storms in the Imperial Valley, especially near the Salton Sea, a drying lake bed fed by agricultural runoff. (KPBS)
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