There is a full-service snack bar with bait and tackle. The agency has drawn down that backstop by about $60 million since 2018 and expects to use another $18 million in the new budget.Lake Hodges’ concession is open on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday only, from 6:00 a.m. Meanwhile, the water authority has a rate stabilization fund of about $100 million to help soften rate hikes. “Solutions are in progress, but it’s going to take some time,” said Jim Madaffer, a longtime political insider who represents the city of San Diego on the water authority board. However, for that to work, the water authority would have to strike a somewhat complicated deal to bank water in Lake Mead. To address the situation, some officials have floated the idea of selling desalinated water to Arizona. “Or else, we’ll be stuck paying for both.” “They’ve got to get smaller as everyone else is getting bigger,” he said of the wholesaler. Water recycling efforts, most notably Pure Water San Diego, could reduce demand for wholesale water in the region by more than 55,000 acre-feet before the end of the decade, according to agency projections.Īt the same time, the rising cost of water will likely encourage even more conservation, said Jack Bebee, general manager of Fallbrook Public Utilities District. But the agency’s situation could get significantly worse as local recycling projects from Oceanside to San Diego to El Cajon come online in the next few years, diminishing the need for wholesale supplies. Recent storms are projected to continue to suppress demand. The wholesaler has seen its sales decline for years as a result of unprecedented drought conservation widely embraced by Californians. The less water the wholesaler sells, the more it must charge for water in order to cover a bevy of fixed costs, most notably water contracts, debt payments and routine maintenance. Perhaps the most confounding factor adding to the water authority’s increased rates next year comes from plummeting demand. The Los Angeles-based agency, which not only sells wholesale supplies to San Diego but transports the region’s Colorado River water, largely blamed the need for rate hikes on inflation and soaring power costs. Meanwhile, the agency expects to pay an additional $25 million to $30 million annually through 2028 as a result of rate increases from MWD. (John Gastaldo/For The San Diego Union-Tribune) “At certain points of the year, we don’t have enough flow going into that facility, so we take treatment from other sources,” said Pierce Rossum, rate and debt manager for the water authority. That’s because its Twin Oaks Valley Water Treatment Plant north of San Marcos has been forced to frequently shutdown. The water authority also plans to shell out an additional $11 million next year to pay for treated water from its upstream wholesaler, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, or MWD. The agency would usually be able to generate hydroelectricity at the century-old facility, but the construction requires that reservoir levels remain too low to operate the system. The water authority, for example, expects to lose about $2.8 million a year through the next decade and beyond as a result of ongoing repairs to Lake Hodges Dam. That includes not only the rising cost of energy needed to transport water from the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains, but a crumbling dam, an underused treatment facility and plummeting demand. The situation is being driven by a storm of unfortunate factors, according to water authority officials. In response to questions about the proposed cost increase, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s staff said in an email: “The city recognizes this is a significant rate increase proposal from the county water authority and needs additional information to fully analyze the rationale for the increase and what action might be taken to reduce it.” Others, such as the city of San Diego, get as much as 90 percent of their supply from the wholesaler. Some water providers are more shielded from the rate hikes because they have local supplies, such as the Sweetwater Authority’s groundwater basin. That sort of crowds us out when we need money, so hopefully you can work on that.” “Basically, that 14 percent flows through to our customers as a 7 percent pass-through increase. “Obviously, 14 percent is a killer for us at retail agencies,” Dan McMillan, who represents the Helix Water District, said at the recent hearing. Many agencies have rate stabilization funds to blunt the impact of sudden spikes. Rates fluctuate based on several factors, including the size of an order and whether supplies are treated prior to delivery. Not all of the region’s two dozen retail water agencies will be impacted equally. Workshops are scheduled in April and May, with approval of the financial blueprint slated for late June. The water authority is holding a series of public hearings in the run-up to adopting its roughly $1.8 billion two-year budget this summer.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |