San Diego arrived in Las Vegas this week ready to sell off some of its excess water at negotiations over the dwindling Colorado River between the states, tribes and farmers who use it.
They left without a deal in place.
Dan Denham, the San Diego County Water Authority’s general manager, has been hinting there’s willing buyers of San Diego’s expensive desalinated ocean water in the state of Arizona. Arizona is first in line to have their Colorado River supply cut off during water shortages. That very scenario is what the annual Las Vegas negotiations were set up to prevent.
Meena Westford, the San Diego County Water Authority’s director of imported water, tells me they’re working with the U.S. Department of the Interior on a process that would allow San Diego to sell water across state lines.
This is called a “paper water” transfer. Simply put, Arizona would pay San Diego to use less Colorado River water and more desal water. And Arizona could then draw more Colorado River water out of the river’s reservoirs. They’d need the federal government’s permission to do that and likely the blessing of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and Imperial Irrigation District, the two powerhouses on the Colorado River that actually have rights to river water. San Diego currently buys its river water from them.
Arizona has a state-backed water infrastructure financing authority which announced it’d like to explore investments in desalination both in California and Mexico. The WIFA, as its known, has about $334 million to spend on projects that generate water.
“At least 75 percent of those funds are required to be used for finding water outside Arizona’s borders,” wrote Chelsea McGuire, WIFA’s executive director, in an email. “Desal is provides a win-win, stable potable water supply both to local water providers and opportunity for entities that don’t sit on the ocean front property to augment supplies.”
For Decades I have said “Desalination Plants should be like Lighthouses all along the California Coast-and have pipelines into other states!” They will create consistent supplies of water in areas like San Diego, where the higher cost of importing expensive water becomes prohibitive, and can be profitable and self sustaining over their operational lifespan by selling the water they produce!
I agree, the way for California to become water independent of the Colorado River, is for other states to pay California to build Desal Plants, then we cut back our draw of Colorado River water, which they can now use.
A win for both sides.
1. The whole point is that there is NO NEED to build pipelines/aqueducts to carry desalination water to points inland. It is a paper transaction, which obviates the need to move the water at all.
2. Desal water is far too costly for ag use, and ag uses most of the water from the Colorado River. So, there are opportunities for paper trades, but only for like-for-like customer types,