Monday ended a 15-year legal battle for water bills, with leaders of the San Diego County Water Department and Southern California’s metropolitan waters signing an agreement to determine the price paid for delivering supplies.
Managers and board members of the two agencies said the dispute lasted for years due to inflexibility, but last year’s negotiations made it a comprehensive agreement. They said ending the legal battle would allow more cooperation among agencies to improve financial situations and move water where needed.
MWD Board Chairman Adán Ortega Jr. said the lawsuit has been too long to complicate the relationship between his agency, which provided water to 19 million people, while the San Diego County Water Department is a member of the MWD and provides water to 3.3 million people.
“That era of conflict is finally over and we can work hard to build relationships based on cooperation and shared goals,” Ortega said.
Nick Serrano, chairman of the San Diego County Water Bureau board, said the reasons for the years of dispute were complicated, but “a lot of it has to do with past personalities and leadership of both agencies.”
Serrano said former Water Authority Board Chairman Mel Katz laid the foundation for a deal. Serrano said he prioritized “the era of litigation has been bothering our two institutions for too long.”
This dispute is mainly about the price of the Water Authority paying MWD for exchange of water. The San Diego Agency obtained some supply of Colorado River water and obtained conservative water from projects across the United States and Coachella canal lined with concrete.
These supplies totaled up to 277,700 acre feet. (Acre feet are 325,851 gallons, enough to provide about three typical homes a year.)
The agencies said MWD obtained the water on the Colorado River and handed it over to San Diego. Starting in 2010, the Water Authority challenged the MWD, which led to years of court arguments and legal judgments that favored both parties.
Under legal settlement, the Water Authority will now pay a fixed price to MWD to provide these supplies, starting at $671 per acre starting in 2026 and make annual adjustments to inflation. This will not be the rate to pay the MWD, which is the key point of the divergence.
The Water Administration can now also sell these supplies to MWD or other member agencies in Southern California.
“This means greater fiscal certainty for both of our institutions. It means new opportunities to move water to communities that need it the most,” Serrano said.
By working together in this way, he said, these institutions will have greater flexibility to work together to meet future challenges, whether it is related to drought, infrastructure investment or solving problems Chronic shortage Along the Colorado River.
“We are finally working side by side to build tomorrow’s solution, rather than endlessly fighting yesterday’s battle,” Serrano said, adding that it also means stabilizing the water prices for people in San Diego County.
MWD general manager Deven Upadhyay said the flexibility brought by the settlement will benefit the entire region.
“The fact that we are here proves that people can do things when they put the past, put our egos, put our demands and focus on the greater good. It’s not an easy task,” Upadhyay said.
He said some of them said at the signing ceremony: “It may be thought that the day will never come.”
As these disputes are settled, the agreement also brings MWD “to provide greater certainty for our budget and plans.”
