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After that, San Diegans made a collective vow: By no means once more.
In 1996, the San Diego County Water Authority struck a landmark settlement to purchase water from farmers within the Imperial Valley, in California’s southeastern nook, that heralded the start of the area’s water divorce from Los Angeles.
Over the next 20 years, the company took on a collection of serious — and costly — infrastructure tasks aimed toward establishing extra numerous sources of water, extra locations to maintain it and extra methods to maneuver it across the county.
In 2010, the authority lined canals within the Imperial Valley with concrete to stop water from seeping into the earth, and made a deal to take the water saved by the method — some 26 billion gallons a yr. The authority completed elevating the San Vicente Dam in 2014, including extra capability to San Vicente Reservoir within the greatest water storage improve within the county’s historical past.
Then there was the lengthy, fraught gestation of a seawater desalination plant, the most important in the US and now the envy of determined communities up the coast, regardless of environmental issues. Since 2015, hundreds of thousands of gallons of seawater have flowed into the $1 billion facility in Carlsbad every day, the place it’s filtered into one thing that tastes prefer it got here from an Evian bottle, not the Pacific Ocean.
Throughout the county, restrictions and conservation pushes have led per capita water use to fall by half over the previous three a long time.
The subsequent main activity? Increase the area’s so-called pure water applications, as soon as given the derisive moniker “bathroom to faucet,” as a result of they purify grey water to make it drinkable. Right this moment, such applications are seen as a few of the most promising paths ahead, not simply in San Diego however throughout the state. (The system in neighboring Orange County is commonly cited as a gold customary.)
San Diego has offered a street map for others now scrambling for water, mentioned Toni Atkins, who’s the president professional tem of the California Senate and beforehand served on the San Diego Metropolis Council. And she or he is happy with that.
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