Water Independence — Not at Any Price

Jim Madaffer is a former San Diego City Council member, past Chair of the San Diego County Water Authority, and Vice Chair of the Colorado River Board of California.

When it comes to water, honesty matters as much as infrastructure. On Tuesday, the San Diego City Council narrowly approved a two-year water rate increase — 14.7 percent next year and 14.5 percent the following year — rejecting staff’s push for a four-year plan. The Council’s message was clear: They want answers and accountability, not finger-pointing.

City staff continue to blame the San Diego County Water Authority for rate hikes, citing higher wholesale costs and claiming the Water Authority “has too much water.” Yet when a councilmember asked what the city’s rate increase would be if the Water Authority raised rates by 0 percent, staff offered only double talk. That moment crystallized a larger issue — a troubling lack of transparency about the city’s own cost drivers, from deferred maintenance and energy costs to the growing expense of building the Pure Water program.

The debate has grown increasingly charged. After I urged the city last month to pause and reassess before doubling down on Phase 2 of Pure Water, environmental attorney Marco Gonzalez wrote a Voice of San Diego column attacking that position — calling my caution “deeply disappointing” and accusing me of undermining the city’s water independence. But asking hard questions about cost and pacing isn’t obstruction; it’s responsibility.

Let’s be clear: Water independence is desirable — but not at any price. San Diego already enjoys one of the most diversified and reliable water portfolios in the West, built over decades of investment by the San Diego County Water Authority. Our region is not facing an immediate supply cliff that demands a “build-everything-now” approach.

Still, we should acknowledge lessons learned. The Water Authority itself has faced criticism for investing ahead of demand — a well-intentioned strategy for resilience that nonetheless contributed to today’s affordability challenges. That experience should inform city leaders now: Resilience must be balanced with reason.

According to the city’s own materials, Phase 1 of Pure Water is projected to cost about $1.5 billion for planning, design, and construction. The city’s earlier estimates placed the cost of its purified water at $1,700 to $1,900 per acre-foot, compared with roughly $1,400 for existing Water Authority supplies. In other words, the recycled-sewage option is meaningfully more expensive than the baseline — yet discussion of cost remains largely absent.

Meanwhile, the Voice of San Diego and Union-Tribune both report that wholesale water rates could more than double by 2035 — in part due to overlapping supply projects like Pure Water. Add billions in new capital spending proposed by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and the picture becomes clear: Every regional construction dollar eventually appears on the same ratepayer bill – or our property taxes.

Nor is Pure Water the only such project. The East County Advanced Water Purification Project and the city of Oceanside’s Pure Water initiative are also adding recycled-water capacity. Each program has merit, but together they reshape regional supply and cost dynamics. Coordinated planning — not parallel expansion — should be our goal.

And here’s the hydrologic truth: you can’t recycle water you don’t have. San Diego averages less than 10 inches of rain a year. Every gallon we “reuse” still begins as imported water, most often from the Colorado River. Reuse helps stretch that resource, but it doesn’t free us from it — and for now, our region’s Colorado River water remains both more reliable and more affordable.

None of this argues against Pure Water itself; it argues for pacing and prudence. Now that the City Council has limited the rate plan to two years, it should insist that staff provide honest, verifiable data — not blame — before committing billions more to Phase 2. That means an independent cost-benefit review that answers fundamental questions:

• What will the next acre-foot actually cost?
• How will conservation and technology affect demand?
• What share of costs will fall on households least able to pay?

Without these answers, San Diego risks locking in liabilities our children and grandchildren will inherit — all while residents are asked to “trust the process” without a full picture of where their money goes.

Finally, a message to Mr. Gonzalez: I was among the first to embrace the city’s Pure Water vision over 25 years ago when others were nowhere to be found. But if your environmental mission truly places low-income and disadvantaged communities front and center, then embrace scrutiny of cost as fervently as you demand waste-stream reuse — because they are one and the same. Advocating for recycled-water projects is laudable. But the narrative cannot skip the ratepayer calculus. Affordability isn’t a tagline to append after the environmental pitch; it’s the measure of whether that vision is truly equitable and sustainable.

The path to resilience isn’t simply building more — it’s building wisely.

San Diegans deserve representation from people unafraid to ask the hard questions: Can we afford this? Do we need to build now? Who pays, and will they be able to? If we don’t ask them now, the very ratepayers we claim to protect will be left holding the bill.

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