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San Diego Water Shortage Stories

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Water shortage looms over San Diego

by Ruthie Kelly
November 3, 2008

Most people don't know that next year, San Diego is going to run out of water.

This sounds so profoundly shocking that it's hard to believe at first. It's not just that we'll have less water and we'll have to cut back, take less showers, wash our cars less...we're talking about exhausting the supply of potable drinking water for the nearly 3 million residents of San Diego County.

A combination of factors drive this severe water shortage. San Diego, and the larger part of California, continues to experience a dry spell that's lasted more than two years, which Gov. Schwarzenegger declared to be an official drought in June. Local rainfall, which supplies 10 to 20 percent of San Diego's water supply, is perilously low. But San Diego is not the only region that's currently dry — in fact, all the sources that we rely on for water are going through similar shortages. As the city at the end of the supply chain, that makes us dangerously dependent on outside sources for water.

Now the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a wholesaler in Los Angeles that supplies up to 90 percent of the water bought by the San Diego County Water Authority, is also running out of sources of drinkable water. The Colorado River has dwindled down to a fraction of its former supply. Local lakes, like Lake Mead, Lake Shasta, and Lake Oroville are less than 50 percent full.

"The problem is essentially a supply shortage," said Teresa Penunuri, a public affairs representative for the San Diego County Water Authority. "We do have a drought, because we get water from far off systems like the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada. We don't get a lot of rain here, so we have to move water from far away. But both of those areas have been dry."

Initially, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California turned to snow melt from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to make up the difference. That snow melt flows through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which is also dwindling. But it's not just the decreasing water supply that hampers with deliveries from the Delta.

"The pumps that transport water to us from Northern California were cut back to save an endangered fish that, it's thought, were dying from the pumps, though they're not yet sure," said Penunuri. That fish is the delta smelt, a tiny species which has been listed as threatened since 1993 and whose sole habitat is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Estuary.

"At the moment, the pumps are only sending 35 percent of the amount of water that we normally get," said Penunuri. "So not are only are we getting less water because of the drought, but we're getting less of the less water because of the pumps."

So the water supply for 16 million San Diegans that had been coming through the delta has been reduced to enough for only 1.6 million people. Storage supplies, too, are shrinking. Metropolitan Water District of Sourthern California considered cutting off part of their deliveries to San Diego, though how much those deliveries will be reduced by is still being determined.

"Deliveries will never be cut off completely," said Denise Vedder, a public affairs manager from the San Diego County Water Authority. "If it comes to allocation, San Diego will get a portion of the allocation, which could be less than what we're getting now. The system of allocation also affects how much our share of water is." Until the details of the allocation are determined, there is no way to know exactly what that share of allocation will be.

There are several solutions on the table, proposed by a variety of interest groups. Water conservation from individual citizens is a must. Possible mandatory water restrictions are also being considered by the city council and the mayor, as is an expansion of the controversial practice of water recycling, in which used water from appliances like toilets and taps would be filtered, returned to the struggling delta, and ultimately returned to the system to be purified again. Water recycling is already used in many local systems that don't use water for drinking, such as watering lawns. However, many citizens are concerned about the potential implications of using such water for human consumption, especially the effectiveness of the purification process.

Ultimately, there's no one solution to the impending water shortage. Only a combination of solutions can unravel a situation created by a combination of factors.

That, or the miracle of rain.

Sources for further reading:

The Sacramento Bee: L Schwarzenegger hopes drought decree is wake-up call

The San Diego Union Tribune: Governor to issue drought decree, press for more conservation

The San Francisco Chronicle: Need to deal with water needs crucial

State of California Department of Fish and Game: The delta smelt

The City of San Diego Water Department: Water Quality Frequently Asked Questions — Where does our water come from?

The Voice of San Diego: Water Rationing Grows Increasingly Likely

CBS Local Channel 8: San Diego County facing water rationing