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Part 11:
Developing the Next
Generation of
Water Supplies
Introduction Over the Next
Hill
E
ven during the struggle over who could
develop the San Diego River in the
1920s, people were beginning to look
beyond the county’s footprint for water
resources. The opti
mists believed that just
one more water development project would
solve their needs – but that goal proved elu-
sive. An increasingly large group of residents
came to realize that San Diego County would
have to go the way of Los Angeles County
and start i
mporting water to meet the needs of
a growing population and economy.
Gradually, the San Diego region would look
“over the next hill” to the Colorado River and
then to Northern California rivers fed by the
abundant snows of the Sierra Nevada. During
the last half of the 20th century, the county
became increasingly dependent on i
mported
supplies and al
most every drop of drinking
water came from distant sources.
Droughts, regulatory restrictions on water
sources and the fear of a major earthquake
severing i
mported water supply lines helped
remind county leaders about the need to find
new i
mported supplies they could better con-
trol – and to develop new local sources that
could avoid some of these risks altogether.
Starting in the early 1990s, farsighted and
creative thinking by the Water Authority turned
those opportunities into a diversified and much
more reliable water supply portfolio with few
equals.
Part Two looks at how the county has
succeeded in acquiring and maintaining a
reliable water supply.