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Deadline Looms as Imperial Pulls Plug

Deadline Looms as Imperial Pulls Plug

Threatened Shut-Off of Water Puts Local Business on Notice

BY LEE ZION

Staff Writer

During San Diego’s recent energy crisis, other cities sent flashlights to local high-tech companies to entice them to relocate.

History could soon repeat itself, as San Diego stands to lose one-third of its water supply as of Jan. 1 , about 65 billion gallons a year.

“They’re liable to be sending bottles of water now,” said Kevin Carroll, executive director of the AEA, an electronics trade association. “It’s a competitive environment for technology companies. And this is just one more thing, and one more cost, that we really don’t need to absorb at this time,” he said.

Carroll was worried by the results of a Dec. 9 vote by the Imperial Irrigation District, which rejected a water transfer agreement under which Imperial Valley would have sold part of its allotment of Colorado River water to San Diego.

The derailed transfer, meanwhile, is part of a much larger deal. If it fails, this could cost the entire state billions of gallons of water annually, said Erik Bruvold, vice president of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp.

The Quantitative Settlement Agreement, managed at the federal level, governs how water from the Colorado River is distributed to California water agencies. Without the deal , and the water transfer agreement , in place by a federal deadline of Dec. 31, federal officials will drastically reduce California’s access to Colorado River water, Bruvold said.

California will then be limited to 4.4 million acre-feet annually. That’s a reduction of about 700,000 acre-feet, or 230 billion gallons. San Diego’s share in that loss would be 200,000 acre-feet, or 65 billion gallons a year, he said.

Carroll said the high-tech industry in San Diego would be damaged if water supplies were cut that much.

“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to be a manufacturer in San Diego, and this is just one more nail in the coffin,” Carroll said.

Carroll said no statistics were available on how much water the high-tech industry consumes, but indicated the manufacturing side of the business uses much more water than software developers. Manufacturers are highly vulnerable, he said.

Eric Larson, executive director of the San Diego County Farm Bureau, said he’s worried about the impact to agriculture if the county lost one-third of its water. With North County farmers already facing quarantine, a reduction in water supplies would put many growers out of business, he said.

Larson was concerned agriculture would bear the brunt of the loss, if local leaders are tempted to cut water deliveries to growers disproportionately.

But even if the cuts are balanced across the board, local agriculture will still lose. Farmers have already installed conservation measures on their land due to the high price of water. They can’t conserve any more water, except by taking land out of production, he said.

In addition, a reduced supply means the price of water could increase. Already, San Diego farmers pay the highest price for water in the state; additional price increases will force them to cut back production even further, he said.

The irony is that in the long run, this will increase the water shortage locally. If farmland goes out of production, the farmer may have to sell that property, Larson said.

“The most ready buyer is usually the development community,” he said. “The water problems that we have are being caused by an increased demand by urban populations. If there’s an attempt to convert farmland into urban population, it just feeds the engine of a water shortage.”

Bruvold added that the deal’s collapse has already raised doubts about the long-term reliability of the local water supply. Those doubts could dissuade businesses from coming to the area, and sway other companies to leave San Diego, he said.

However, Bruvold remains optimistic about the short term. For one thing, the year isn’t over yet, and there’s a chance an agreement will be signed in time.

But if the agreement fails, the Metropolitan Water District and the San Diego County Water Authority have enough stored water on hand to respond to cutbacks. He said he’d received assurances that the region has enough storage to last for the next couple of years.

Also, if the agreement isn’t signed by the year-end deadline, the federal government will step in to get negotiations back on track. However, the Imperial district has the most to lose, while San Diego has everything to gain, he said.

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