Morning Report: San Diego’s Water Wars Are Getting Messy

As San Diego braces for steep water rate hikes, city water leaders are looking for someone to blame.

The city’s Public Utilities Department blames the San Diego County Water Authority, which sells pricey desalinated water from Carlsbad and imports water from the Colorado River. Meanwhile, the Water Authority is pointing to Pure Water, the city’s massive (and expensive) project to recycle sewage into drinking water, for driving up costs across the region.

Pure Water is meant to keep millions of gallons of wastewater out of the ocean and instead treat it and send it through San Diego taps. The project’s second and largest phase is “going to happen in some form,” the chair of the Water Authority board told our MacKenzie Elmer. 

But some water officials are now debating whether it should happen at all.

City leaders say Pure Water could eventually produce cheaper water than what they buy from the Water Authority. The catch? San Diego is the Water Authority’s biggest customer. If the city makes more of its own water, it’ll buy less, and that’s what’s driving the tension.

Meanwhile, the Water Authority says the region already has more water than it needs and wants to sell off its extra supply instead of watching the city spend billions more on Pure Water. But less water recycling would mean more reliance on a shrinking Colorado River and one of the most expensive desal plants in the country.

Read the Environment Report here.

North County Mayors Really Hate State Housing Laws

What do the mayors from Oceanside, Encinitas, San Marcos, Carlsbad and Solana Beach all have in common? They have a deep disdain for current state housing mandates.

Our Tigist Layne moderated a panel last week at Pacific Ridge School in Carlsbad where mayors from five different North County cities talked about state housing laws and local control.

Oceanside Mayor Esther Sanchez, Encinitas Mayor Bruce Ehlers, San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones, Carlsbad Mayor Keith Blackburn and Solana Beach Mayor Lesa Heebner all agreed that state housing laws are overreaching and are resulting in new expensive housing, not more affordable housing.

The solution? The mayors plugged a proposed ballot initiative that elected officials from across the state are endorsing called Our Neighborhood Voices that promises to restore local control.

Layne has previously reported that lawmakers at the state level don’t have an appetite for changing state housing laws in favor of more local control, so public officials like Ehlers say they have their sights set on passing a ballot initiative.

SDUSD Board to Vote on Long-Awaited Safe Parking Project

It’s happening. 

After a more than two-year-long slog, a safe parking site at the now-vacant Central Elementary will pass its final hurdle at tonight’s San Diego Unified board meeting. The project, which was plagued by bureaucratic and fiscal roadblocks, was first floated in June 2023. In its current form, the site will offer homeless families with children a place to sleep in their vehicles overnight. 

San Diego Unified’s board will vote tonight on whether to approve a licensing agreement with the San Diego Housing Commission for the site. According to the agenda item, the commission is expected to contract Jewish Family Services to manage the site. 

The vote is set to cap off a tumultuous two years, during which Mayor Todd Gloria’s office left the potential safe parking site for dead. Forceful advocacy from district board members and budget maneuvering from City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, though, resuscitated the project.

“Moms and their kids shouldn’t be sleeping on the streets in their cars when there’s a safe place they could be,” Elo-Rivera said. “Moving them to a safe parking place isn’t housing, but it’s a hell of a lot better than where they were at.” 

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In Other News

• Most arrests under Proposition 36, which passed last November, have been for drug possession, often involving people with long histories of addiction and, in many cases, homelessness. But because the measure didn’t include funding, county officials are lacking resources to offer support, leaving many people to find and secure treatment all on their own. (Union-Tribune).
• A delegation of San Diego legislators was again refused entry into an ICE detention facility at the Edward J. Schwartz United States Courthouse on Monday. This is the second time legislators were denied entry. (KPBS)
• Nonprofits including Interfaith Community Services in North County are launching new fundraising efforts to offset recent federal funding cuts. (Coast News)

The Morning Report was written by Tigist Layne, Jakob McWhinney and Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña.

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