While the statewide drought withers farms, evaporates lakes, shortens showers and browns lawns, it’s having a surprising collateral effect in San Diego.

Water, literally, is building behind the dam.

There are real shortages elsewhere in the state, but not here. Water supplies are at 99 percent of normal.

So the result of state-mandated cuts in usage is an abundance of water supply — billions of gallons and growing. And rates are being forced up because water suppliers have fixed costs, while conservation is costing them revenue.

Since state-mandated conservation targets took effect in May, the county’s water providers have had to store some 13.7 billion additional gallons of water in reservoirs — enough to supply more than 100,000 typical homes for a year, according to data provided by the San Diego County Water Authority.

San Diego County reservoir storage levels

It’s all going into the San Vicente Reservoir, where ratepayers recently funded a $416 million expansion. When the new, $1-billion-dollar Carlsbad desalination plant comes online later this year, it will free up even more water to store in reserve, county water officials said.

Whether San Diego County gets to start using the supplies that are building up hinges on whether the state-mandated conservation targets imposed on urban suppliers this past May will continue past their expected end date of Feb. 29, 2016.

“Are we storing water? We’re absolutely storing water, and that’s a good thing,” said Dennis Cushman, assistant general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority. “There’s an open question about whether or not we would be able to use that water (in the next couple years).”

What about pumping the water to other jurisdictions, more in need, or selling the water to them? Not an option at this time, the authority says.

“The mechanisms aren't currently in place to allow for water transfers or sales,” spokesman Mike Lee said. “If a mechanism were in place, the water authority would make use of it as appropriate for the best interests of the region's ratepayers.”

The situation is frustrating to some local water agencies.

“We have to meet these conservation targets, and the way we’re doing it is bludgeoning and threatening my customers,” said Gary Arant, general manager at the Valley Center Municipal Water District. “And at the same time, I know that we have all the water we need.”

He said it makes no sense that water users who have funded billions of dollars of improvements to supplies and storage in San Diego County can’t take advantage of them.

“We don’t have the same degree of water supply shortages that the rest of the state does,” Arant said.

The conservation mandates are an emergency response, and are intended to be short-term, state water officials said. But no one knows how long the drought will continue, or how much worse it will get, so getting everybody to do everything they can to conserve right now is mission-critical to avoid statewide disaster.



“Many of the state’s larger suppliers, especially the Southern California suppliers, have diversified water portfolios, and those portfolios include local supplies,” said Eric Oppenheimer, director of research, planning, and performance for the State Water Resources Control Board. “But they also include groundwater, imported supplies, and, to a large extent, our water supply is interconnected. So we can’t look at local water supply in isolation.”

Since May, the county’s suppliers have been required by state regulators to meet individual conservation targets of between 12 percent and 36 percent of 2013 water use.

The mandatory conservation didn’t just save water. It tamped down on revenue from water bills, forcing many suppliers to raise rates to cover the fixed costs of operating their systems. The City of San Diego’s public utilities department plans to raise rates 17 percent in the next year, in part to make up for the losses from conservation.

Some local water officials say ratepayers should be reaping the rewards of local planning and investment: more stable rates, longer showers, greener grass. Instead, they are being forced by the state to suffer as though water may stop flowing from their faucets at any moment, water officials say.

That is the situation elsewhere in the state.

Data provided by the Department of Water Resources showed a steady decline in the the total water stored in the 154 reservoirs the department monitors. The reservoirs held 33.7 million acre feet in 2011. Water levels decreased every year thereafter, sinking to 14.2 million acre feet in July 2015.

A handful of reservoirs have seen levels rise compared to last year, in addition to San Diego, said Maury Roos of the State Department of Water Resources. Most of the increases can be explained by rainfall and the needs of salmon fisheries.

Not so in San Diego, county water officials said. The county’s stored water levels are rising because ratepayers planned ahead, building a desalination plant, expanding reservoir space, lining canals and building recycled water infrastructure.

Last year, the county water authority completed its $416-million-dollar project to raise the San Vicente Dam 117 feet, nearly doubling the reservoir’s capacity, and increasing the county’s combined reservoir storage space from 600,000 acre feet to about 745,000 acre feet.

Filling reservoirs behind new dams too quickly can be dangerous, so new capacity is approved incrementally.

All the new space in the San Vicente reservoir is not yet ready for filling, and it has reached its current regulatory limit, Cushman said. The county water authority expects state dam safety officials to approve use of the remaining capacity in the coming weeks.

The water authority can put water in other reservoirs in the meantime if need be, Cushman said. At the moment, it is simply buying less imported water.

The county water authority estimates that storage space could run out in about two years, if countywide conservation continues at current levels. If space runs out, the authority will stop buying imported water and draw down the reservoirs.

In setting targets for individual agencies, the state made adjustments to reward agencies’ previous conservation efforts. But the water control board did not adjust for local water supply conditions.



The county water authority, Valley Center, and other local water suppliers fought without success to get the state to factor in local water availability, so well-supplied areas would not have to cut back as much.

In letters to state regulators, dated April 13, April 22, and May 4 of this year, the county water authority laid out its case for conservation targets that reward ratepayers for investing in reliable local supply.

“Communities will only invest in these local supply options when they know the direct supply benefits from these investments will be realized to protect their economies and quality of life during times of supply shortage,” the authority wrote in a letter dated May 4, 2015.

State water resources control officials said they disagreed that their policies would have a chilling effect on new investment.

“Improved water conservation, in our view, shouldn’t be a disincentive to investment in local supplies as they’re suggesting,” Oppenheimer said. “Given the projection of impacts on the water supply from climate change, it’s not a choice between one or the other; we’re going to need both. And conservation is going to have to become a way of life for Californians.”

Some water districts have fallen short of their targets, but the county as a whole has exceeded conservation mandates, according to county data. In June and July, ratepayers conserved 26 percent and 30 percent, respectively, compared to the same months in 2013.