Why the County Water Authority's proposed RCS Project is all wet

Recently, the Village News published information presented by the San Diego County Water Authority related to the proposed Regional Conveyance System Project. As the general managers of the Fallbrook Public Utility District and Rainbow Municipal Water District, we would like to explain why both of our locally elected board of directors oppose this project.

In its press release, published in the Village News on Jan. 21, 2021, the Water Authority contends that the proposed project, which will cost more than $5 billion, will save ratepayers money compared to continuing to move San Diego’s water supplies through Metropolitan Water District facilities (the Water Authority is a member agency of Metropolitan Water District, or MWD).

Obviously, we don’t agree with this.

To briefly summarize our boards’ perspectives on the RCS Project:

* There is no need for additional delivery capacity, as the MWD Colorado River Aqueduct and Pipelines connecting San Diego to MWD have more than enough capacity to serve the projected future water supply needs of the San Diego region; and

* The project brings no additional supplies to the San Diego region, and in fact 20,000 acre-feet of the very salty water at the end of the Colorado River are estimated to be lost to make it usable for agriculture. Moreover, the project will not even be able to deliver this water to the vast majority of our Districts’ customers; and

* Using SDCWA’s own cost assumptions, current ratepayers will incur $3.6 billion in costs in addition to what they would be paying to MWD during the construction period, which would be from 2035 to 2045. Put in perspective, this project would cost every resident of San Diego County approximately $1,000; and

* Again, using SDCWA’s cost projection assumptions and data, the RCS Project does not actually start saving money until 2083 – 62 years from now. This means any potential savings occurring well beyond the lives of today’s ratepayers. Moreover, the anticipated savings from the project are speculative and have been calculated over a 92-year period, opening the savings calculation to a wide range of risks, uncertainties and possible outcomes.

In summary, the RCS Project will cost you and the ratepayers billions and would only duplicate existing delivery capacity with no added water resource benefit. That’s why most water districts in the region are strongly opposed to this project.

Our boards see no compelling water resource benefit to justify burdening our ratepayers with the exorbitant cost of the RCS Project. As such, it remains the consensus of the Fallbrook Public Utility District and Rainbow Municipal Water Districts’ boards of directors that the Water Authority should cease work and stop spending ratepayers’ money on this needless project.

Our boards understand that the impact of high water bills is a serious challenge for our communities. Maintaining aging infrastructure and delivering water from far away is expensive, so when we ask our communities to fund projects, we make sure that our communities benefit from these projects.

These actions by the Water Authority, which take money from the pockets of the residents of our service areas without delivering a clear benefit, is another reason why the Fallbrook and Rainbow water districts are seeking to detach from the Water Authority and obtain our water elsewhere.

Jack Bebee, Fallbrook Public Utilities District

Tom Kennedy, Rainbow Municipal Water District