San Diego water officials cheered the region’s water-saving efforts Thursday but chafed at statewide restrictions that don’t take into account local investments in desalination, recycling and storage capacity.
“There really is this disconnect between what local agencies have done to make themselves drought-proof and what the state has done with the mandate,” said Dana Friehauf, water resources manager for the San Diego County Water Authority.
Friehauf said that since May the agency has stored 42,000 acre feet of water — enough to serve nearly 100,000 homes — in the recently enlarged San Vicente Dam because local supplies now exceed demand.
“This drought is a legislatively-mandated drought,” said Mike McSweeney, senior public policy advisor for the Building Industry Association of San Diego. He said San Diego has adequate supplies because “we planned ahead and put in infrastructure.”
Friehaus and McSweeney spoke at a “Drought Town Hall” organized by Assemblyman Brian Jones, who represents most of East County and parts of Temecula. The event in El Cajon drew 150 people.
Jones said San Diego needs relief from drought restrictions because of local investments such as the new Carlsbad Desalination Project and expansion of the San Vicente Dam.
“Unfortunately, Sacramento has not been as proactive as San Diego County,” Jones said, noting that money from the recently approved state water bond is only slowly being spent because of environmental challenges.
He said his position, and that of the Republicans in the General Assembly, is that California needs to invest in rebuilding the state’s aging water infrasturcture.
The town hall came on the same day that the water authority reported a 32 percent decline in water use last month compared to July 2013. That was much more than the state-mandated cutback of 20 percent countywide.
“The residents and buisnesses have really stepped it up and done their part to conserve,” Friehauf noted.
Allen Carlisle, general manager of the Padre Dam Municipal Water District, said that his customers have cut average water use from around 150 gallons a day in 2002 to just over 100 gallons today.
“The bottom line is that we’re at the end of the pipeline here in San Diego. We need to continue to develop local supplies,” he said.
He said an important source will be recycled waste water, noting that currently 12.5 million gallons of waste water from East County are dumped into the Pacific Ocean daily. Padre Dam and the Helix Water District are working on a joint project to recycle this water.