Thursday could be something of a doomsday for water prices in San Diego.
The San Diego County Water Authority is set to debate an 18 percent hike in prices, our MacKenzie Elmer reports.
An increase of 18 percent is much more severe than water rate increases in the past decade. The Water Authority typically increases rates by 5 to 10 percent. The most recent time it considered anything this high was 2010 when its board passed a 20 percent increase.
Why it matters: It doesn’t necessarily mean your rates will go up that much. This is the rate that the Water Authority charges its member agencies, like the city of San Diego. The city and all its peers will have to raise rates too with something this massive coming from the top.
(Our Scott Lewis wrote about the rate increase the wholesaler to the Water Authority also put in motion. Everyone’s doing it.)
BUT WHY???
San Diego County — arid region that it is — is actually awash in water. Which is doubly confusing, because, like, why should that make rates go up?
When San Diego has particularly wet years that means the Water Authority doesn’t get to sell as much water to its various customers around the county, like the city of San Diego. (The Water Authority, unlike other utility giants such as SDG&E, is a government body.) The Water Authority not having enough cash is a big problem because the Water Authority has a lot of debt.
Starting in the 1990’s, the Water Authority came up with new ways to get water, including buying it from Imperial Valley as well as building a desalination plant. The Water Authority has to pay all that debt — and without a rate increase, it can’t do it.
At least that’s what its staff says.
Related: Two Water Authority board members made the case that now is the time for the water rate increases in an op-ed for Voice of San Diego Wednesday. (Op-ed means it’s an opinion. It doesn’t mean we endorse it.)
“It would be easy for us to defer maintenance on our water infrastructure to temporarily blunt the sticker shock of rising rates,” the two board members wrote. But, they argued, the time to invest is now.
Read Elmer’s piece on the proposed water rate increase here.
Cell Phone Ban Could Hit SD Schools
Los Angeles Unified recently made a bold decision: banning student cell phone use.
But as our Jakob McWhinney reports, San Diego Unified may not be far behind. At least two San Diego Unified board members said there needs to be a discussion about whether students should have all-day access to their phones. One of the board members also said new policies are likely in the offing.
“Ban” is a strong word, board member Cody Petterson said.
As McWhinney writes: “Exactly what the policy may look like will shift depending on what staff members find in their research review. If they find cell phones in classes harm learning, then Petterson thinks they’ll ban them from classrooms. But if they find cell phone use creates more severe social and emotional harm, ‘We’re going to have to consider more profound and more pervasive exclusions,’ Petterson said.”
Read the full Learning Curve here.
In Other News
- The first all-electric tugboat, named the eWolf, was christened on San Diego Bay. (FOX 5 & KUSI)
- The San Diego City Council’s infrastructure committee gave the greenlight to a $100 million contract for a consulting firm to help the city fix its failing dams. San Diego’s dams are in poor repair — and because of that some of the city’s reservoirs can’t hold as much water as they should. The contract will still need to be approved by the full City Council. (CBS 8)
- Two giant pandas left China en route for the San Diego Zoo on Wednesday. They will be the first giant pandas to enter the United States in 21 years. (New York Times)
- Someone flying a drone near Tuesday’s fire in Del Mar Heights interfered, at least temporarily, with firefighters ability to drop water on the blaze. San Diego Fire-Rescue posted a stern, all caps warning on X to NOT DO THAT KIND OF THING. (NBC 7)
The Morning Report was written by Will Huntsberry. It was edited by Scott Lewis.