City of San Diego officials may be rethinking Phase 2 of its Pure Water project, as the $1.5 billion Phase 1 nears completion.

Phase 1 will recycle 30 million gallons of sewage per day. It’s one of the largest infrastructure projects ever undertaken in the region. But elected officials are debating what the second phase might entail.

Abundance of water

San Diego is experiencing what might seem like a counter-intuitive problem — it currently has too much water. The city has purchased lots of water from farmers and the desalination plant in Carlsbad.

A fight between city of San Diego leaders and regional leaders has broken out about whether the city should keep creating more water through recycling before it’s able to sell off the excess supply.

These tensions overflowed at an Oct. 28 City Council meeting when the council members debated and approved a compounded 32% water rate increase over the next two years.

Less water, higher rates?

County Water Authority officials warned the city that if they went forward with Phase 2, water rates could get even worse.
That’s because if water recycling results in fewer people buying the stored water, the agency will have to charge more to pay for it.

“It makes almost no sense to me, it’s really hard for our consumers to understand, but that is what we are being told is the issue,” Councilmember Marni von Wilpert said. “And so as we are going to buy less water from the County Water Authority, they are then going to charge us all more per acre foot.”

County officials are working hard to sell water to cities around Los Angeles and to other states like Nevada and Arizona. But if they aren’t successful and Phase 2 of the water recycling plan moves forward, San Diego will have even more water than it needs and potentially higher bills to pay.

That led the chairman of the County Water Authority, who also works for Mayor Todd Gloria, to say that they’re rethinking exactly how big Phase 2 needs to be.

The city only raised water rates for the next two years, not four years as the mayor had wanted. But the bills are still coming, and for now, nobody is around to help pay them.