Metropolitan Water District Yanks County Water Conservation Funds

The huge of Southern California has decided that if the San Diego County Water Authority won’t play by Met’s rules, Met will just take its ball and go home.

That’s as polite a way as I can think of to say that Met is playing hardball politics at its absolute lowest level.

Late Tuesday, Met’s board of directors decided to renege on its promise to provide more than $3 million in water conservation funds to conservation projects in Ramona and other areas of San Diego county- money collected from the county water authority and its member agencies, including us here at Padre Dam.

Met board chairman John Foley says, “the board voted to continue offering water-saving incentives in San Diego county, despite the Water Authority’s ongoing litigation against Metropolitan.”

The word for that is- lie.

This is pure retaliation from Met against San Diego county for going outside the Met’s kennel of compliant puppies to seek additional water supplies on its own- specifically, the canal lining project with the Imperial Irrigation District, which will eventually provide some 200,000 acre-feet of water to San Diego.

It’s also retribution against San Diego for daring to sue Met for what the County Water Authority claims are hideously high overcharges for transporting water through Met’s system of canals and pipelines.

SDCWA says Met is overcharging some $31 million this year, and the overcharges will reach $230 million within the next decade.

Met is frankly in financial trouble these days. Water sales are down 32 percent, while their rates to sell water to SDCWA have risen 55 percent.

That’s no way to run a business- but neither is charging your biggest single customer usurious rates because your balance sheet doesn’t look so hot.

That is precisely what Met is doing to San Diego- and it stinks to high heaven.

Why do you care about all this? Because here in the district, every drop of water comes to us from the - which buys it from Met- which buys it from the state of California and Colorado River sources.

You see, all this would go away and all would be sweetness and light if only the San Diego County Water Authority would just drop that lawsuit and rejoin all the puppies in the kennel under the benevolent mothering of Mama Met.

I sincerely hope that won’t happen.

I sincerely hope SDCWA continues the lawsuit, to be heard in San Francisco Superior Court.

I sincerely hope the SDCWA wins the suit, and wins the certain appeals.

It’s past time- WAY past time- that someone with the power to do so stood up against Met and its high-handed control tactics.

It’s been going on for decades, and costing all of us money we should never have had to spend.

I’ve watched it happen for 42 years, and I’m sick of seeing it.

You should be, too.