By Mackenzie Elmer, Voice of San Diego
This story was first published by Voice of San Diego. Sign up for VOSD’s newsletters here.
The Colorado River’s biggest single user – farmers in Imperial Valley – made another agreement with the federal government to cut their take of the overused, threatened river for the next two years, with help from San Diego.
The Imperial Irrigation District’s board announced this week it’d pay farmers to skip some harvests in the coming two years in order to keep around 700,000 acre feet of water (an acre-foot is two California households’ annual water use) in the river’s biggest reservoir, Lake Mead.
San Diego is in discussions with Imperial Valley to help farmers reach that goal by selling back some of the water it purchases from the valley. The San Diego County Water Authority has more water than it can use right now after recent rainy years broke multiple years of drought. It’s in a budget pinch, facing a $2 million cut to its budget along with a 14 percent rate increase on the cost of water for its 22 customer water districts.
San Diego will likely replicate the three-way water swap it made last year to save money with Imperial Valley and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and buy cheaper California water from Metropolitan instead of pricier Colorado River water.
Water Authority General Manager Dan Denham told Voice of San Diego last year’s deal generated $20 million in savings, which equates to a 3 percent reduction in water rates for San Diegans.
In exchange, the federal government would pay the Imperial Valley a hefty price for its water, somewhere around $800 an acre foot, officials said. For comparison, the district pays about $20 an acre foot for that water now. But the $800-a-pop cost would be a higher price tag than what the feds were agreeing to pay Imperial Valley last year in exchange for conservation.
Tina Shields, the water department manager for the district, said Thursday they’re still firming up the price and how much water farmers can actually conserve by 2026 as the deal is coming together deep into 2024. But the district is targeting crops of Alfalfa, Bermuda and Klein grass (crops used to feed livestock and some of the most water-intensive) to generate the water savings.
The federal government had said at the height of the drought a few years ago that the Colorado River’s seven U.S. state users and Mexico need to cut demand by 4 million acre feet, about as much as California uses.
