It seems unfair. You’ve fixed your leaks, you’ve shortened your showers and you’ve let your lawn go brown.
But despite conserving as much water as you can, you’ll most likely be paying more for water next year.
Most of the county’s 24 water districts are proposing or have passed water rate hikes, many linked to a 5.4 percent price increase at the districts’ water wholesaler, the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA).
Click the map below to find out if your water provider is expecting a rate hike for water next year, how much it will be and why they say rates are going up.
We will continue to update this map as we receive more responses from local districts.
To understand why the SDCWA is upping its rates, it’s important to note that the drought is leaving districts with more than just a water shortage.
Local
Drought Dries Up Revenues
This April, as California entered its fourth consecutive year of drought, California Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order that put the state under unprecedented, mandatory water restrictions. As a whole, California was ordered to save 25 percent of its water starting in June.
As a region, San Diego County has to hit an average of 20 percent savings (though that figure varies by district).
Residents have stepped up and cut back their water usage by an average of 27 percent since June, according to SDCWA Public Affairs Representative Mike Lee. But such a drastic drop in water sales impacts the bottom line for many water districts.
“And that was not planned for in anybody's budget,” said Brent Eidson, the deputy director of San Diego’s Public Utilities Department. “That couldn’t be because you're not allowed to charge more than the cost to deliver service, and when the state made these new rules, it sort of changed the game on us.”
Under California Proposition 218, water districts are only allowed to charge citizens what it costs to deliver the water – with no profit margins.
But as water usage and sales dropped this year, many districts and the SDCWA say they are struggling to meet their operating costs.
“Well there’s an inverse relationship. If revenues go down, water sales go down, then that means we still have to pay for at least our overall infrastructure and operation,” said SDCWA’s Finance Director Lisa Marie Harris. “Those costs never go away. And so then obviously the rates...there’s upward pressure to cause the rates to go up so we can still meet our obligations.”
For the SDCWA, part of those fixed costs is paying off roughly $2 billion in outstanding debt tied to efforts to make the county’s water resources reliable (more on that below). Harris said the agency is always looking for ways to refinance and get rid of larger chunks of debt.
Some of the districts echo the same problem: every year, it takes them the same amount to operate their systems, regardless of sales.
“So it doesn't matter if you sell one drop of water out of a pipeline or millions of gallons out of a pipeline,” Eidson explained. “That pipeline still costs the same amount to replace; the pump stations still cost to maintain and run. You have to be ready to serve your customer the second they turn on the water, and a lot of those successes are independent of how much water you sell.”
Some agencies, like the Helix Water District, said they anticipated the drought and were able to hold operating costs flat this year. But like the SDCWA, they are still paying off investments to improve their water reliability.
Rates for the average Helix customer are going up about 9 percent. Carlos Lugo, Helix Water’s general manager, takes issue with Brown’s mandated conservation standards.
“We feel like it’s a broad-brush approach across the state, and here in San Diego, ratepayers have paid for infrastructure,” he told NBC 7.
He and his colleagues believe San Diegans are being “openly penalized” for preparing for drought and cultivating its own sources. The region has 99 percent of the water it needs through the SDCWA without any conservation measures necessary.
Creating water reliability, especially in times of drought, is a big buzz term among the SDCWA. To find out why, we have to jump back to the 1990s.
Another Devastating Drought
It’s been decades – 1946 to be exact – since San Diego County has been able to meet its water needs with just local supplies like groundwater and storm runoff, according to SDCWA’s Mike Lee.
So in the late 1940s the county began importing its water from two sources: the Colorado River and the State Water Project in Northern California.
Transporting San Diego’s water from those sources is the job of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). The SDCWA buys water from MWD and then in turn sells those supplies to local districts.
But in the early 1990s, the land was becoming terrifyingly dry in Southern California. Faced with a lack of supply, the MWD cut San Diego’s water allocation 31 percent going into 1991, Lee said. It was horrible news for the SDCWA, which depended on MWD for 95 percent of its supply.
Then, as drought conditions worsened, the agency threatened a cutback of 50 percent. Civic and business leaders in San Diego were outraged.
“And they literally came to the [SDCWA] boardroom, lined up around the block, down the street to say, ‘Don't do this to us. You have to find a better strategy than putting all your eggs in one basket,’” said Lee.
Though the MWD cutbacks remained at 31 percent (thanks to the rains of Miracle March in 1991), Lee said the SDCWA learned its most important lesson: it needed to diversify its water sources.
Diversifying the County’s Water Portfolio
Just as you would diversify your stock portfolio by investing in different industries, the SDCWA began to invest in different imported water supplies. The costs of those efforts are now showing up on your water bills.
The first step was conservation. This year, the water use per capita in San Diego is 39 percent less than it was in 1990, according to the SDCWA, dropping from an average of 235 gallons used by each person a day to 143.
Next, the SDCWA struck an agreement with Southern California farmers who get their water from the Colorado River. Under the Imperial Irrigation District transfer, the SDCWA pays to transport any water saved by those farmers to San Diego.
The agency also paid to reline parts of the All-American and Coachella canals with concrete – another water-saving measure.
In 2015, those measures brought 180,000 acre feet of water to San Diego – or 34 percent of SDCWA’s water needs; one acre foot is about enough to sustain two average households for a year.
The most recent – and most talked about – large investment is the Carlsbad Desalination Plant. Expected to come online any day now, the plant produces 50 million gallons of drinkable water a day, and by 2020, it should make up 8 percent of the county’s water sources.
Lee said each household will pay about $5 more a month for the more expensive but drought-proof supply. The SDCWA invested $1 billion in the desalination plant.
So as the Water Authority borrows money to fund these multi-million dollar projects -- not to mention another $2.8 billion for capital improvements like water treatment, pipeline replacements and emergency water storage – local water districts are seeing the rates they pay go up and are passing most of that cost along to their customers.
“Water rates have increased significantly to help pay for that increased reliability,” Lee said. “But again if you look at today, where we have 99 percent of the water that we need to meet demand versus in 1991 when we were being cut back 31 percent, our reliability is far higher. That's part of what people are paying for.”
In 2016, as MWD also raises its rates, the SDCWA will be charging 6.6 percent more for its untreated water and 5.4 percent more for its treated water.
That plays into an anticipated 17 percent rise in consumer water rates in the city of San Diego.
“That comes down as a significant factor on the city of San Diego,” said Brent Eidson, the deputy director of San Diego’s Public Utilities Department. “Like I said 90 percent of our water that we service is purchased from them, so if they raise their rates, it’s going to have an immediate impact on our budget and our rates.”
Local districts have projects of their own to fund, which also may factor into a water rate hike. For example, the city of San Diego is investing in its Pure Water Program that turns recycled water into drinkable water.
The districts also pay for maintenance costs like replacing water towers, pipelines or dams.
