The Business of Delivering Water.

Yesterday when I pointed out that delivering water is BIG BUSINESS, I should have been more clear that the old boys club at Metropolitan Water District is not responsible for the proposed delivery of desalinated water from Carlsbad.  That decision is actually our own local misguided water managers here in San Diego at our own County Water Authority.

The irony is our local SDCWA is suing the old boys network at MWD with a claim that their wholesale rates are too high, yet these same local managers want to purchase the Carlsbad-Billion-Dollar-Water!  As a bystander, it is ironic that on one hand they want a reduction, but on the other, no price is too high to pay.

And to those who are saying, ‘but it’s only $780 million, not a billion’ – let’s remember there is mitigation required to offset all the fish killed during the intake process of sucking the water out of the ocean.  The mitigation is a local wetlands restoration project.  Just how many millions will that cost?  So a billion dollars for desalinated water in San Diego is not that far off.

So, from the environment’s perspective, none of these water supply managers is really that different.  They are all using unsustainable practices that do not place enough value on the very resource they are in charge of managing.

Water supply agencies need reform.  They have become businesses.  There is not enough emphasis placed on conservation.  We have not even scratched the surface on this no-cost supply option.  (For the record, if you are a water agency and you implement a rain garden, that is not a conservation program.)  And these water agencies in charge of managing our precious resources should be doing just that: managing the delivery of water with a holistic approach.  Not arguing over rates on one hand, but spending billions to provide California with “an unlimited supply” via desal  That is what a business would do, not a public agency.   The current philosophy is completely unsustainable, and just amounts to a mockery of resource management when the costs to our coast, the habitat of the fish and the ocean life, our enjoyment of the beach, and our pocketbooks is all up for grabs.