SAN DIEGO — In California’s second-largest city, memories are still fresh of a drought 25 years ago that saw the area’s water supplies slashed by about a third.
Billions of dollars were invested to prepare for the next drought, an effort that included building the Western hemisphere’s largest desalination plant, which opens this fall.
Yet the moves count for nothing under sweeping statewide cuts to urban water use approved last week that require hundreds of cities, counties and local agencies to reduce consumption between 8 percent and 36 percent from 2013 levels, starting June 1.
The largest per-capita users must make the biggest percentage cuts, no matter how and where they get their water.
San Diego isn’t the only place complaining. The Orange County Water District, which serves 2.4 million people near Los Angeles, wanted credit for sending wastewater through ground basins for drinking. It started recycling water in 2008 and is boosting production to 100 million gallons a day from 70 million.
San Diego, which imports nearly all of its water, launched its quest for water independence in 1991, after the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California said it was cutting deliveries in half. Metropolitan Water, a giant wholesaler based in Los Angeles, supplied 95 percent of San Diego’s water at the time.
Surprise rains reduced the cut to 31 percent, which lasted 13 months. Still, businesses led by the city’s biotech industry wanted change.
“That really was a wakeup call,” said Dana Friehauf, water resources manager for the San Diego County Water Authority, which supplies 3.1 million people in the city of San Diego and its suburbs. “We heard loud and clear from residents and businesses in San Diego County that we needed to take action to avoid that from happening again.”
Metropolitan Water now supplies less than half of San Diego’s water and will deliver less than a third in 2020. But the diversification has been costly.
In 2003, San Diego began buying water from California’s Imperial Valley in the nation’s largest farm-to-city water transfer, a move that San Diego leaders said would offer protection during drought because Imperial Valley’s senior rights to Colorado River water put them at the front of the line.
In 2012, San Diego sought more protection by agreeing to buy water from a $1 billion desalination plant in suburban Carlsbad. The hemisphere’s largest such plant will produce 50 million gallons a day by 2020, enough to satisfy 7 percent of regional demand.
