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Chapter 7: Colorado River Water
Water Authority to distribute the pending
Colorado River water. The San Diego
County Water Authority was formed
with nine original members on
June 9, 1944, just three days
after D-Day.
San Diego stood on the brink of a
water crisis that threatened the
war effort. The new Water
Authority, with Fred Heilbron at its
helm, was poised to help — but the
pipeline was not yet complete, and it
still had no water to sell as the war
came to an end in 1945. As William Jennings
noted, the Water Authority was still a humble,
homemade organization, with his own wife tak-
ing minutes of the meetings.
The new San Diego County Water Authority
joined the Metropolitan Water District in 1946
so it could receive water deliveries when the
pipeline from the Colorado River Aqueduct
was complete. 6 Upon joining Metropolitan,
San Diego’s 112,000 acre-foot share of the
Colorado River was added to Metropolitan’s
allotted share.
On November 26, 1947, the first Colorado
River water finally flowed south from the
Colorado River aqueduct’s western end in
Riverside County for 71 miles into the city of
San Diego’s San Vicente Reservoir near
Lakeside via the San Vicente Aqueduct (later
renamed Pipeline 1 of the First San Diego
Aqueduct). It ran over some of the most
rugged country ever crossed by a water line
and could deliver about 65,000 acre-feet per
year. “At a time when the whole area of San
Diego County had less than three week’s
water supply remaining, it was just in time,”
recalled Jennings.7 The reservoirs that stored
local water were dry.
MORE PIPELINES
Most experts expected the population of San
Diego to decrease after the war, but that was
not the case. The people stayed and as
some predicted, Pipeline 1 proved inadequate
to meeting their needs. A drought in 1950
and 1951 increased concerns about water
shortages in the county.
The Water Authority appealed to the Navy to
help build a second pipeline for the aqueduct.
The Navy was willing, but its hands were tied.
It had not actually built the first pipeline; the
Bureau of Reclamation had. The Bureau was
more than willing to build a new pipeline, but it
could not. It could only fund agricultural proj-
ects. An exception had been made for the
Fred Heilbron
WATER AUTHORITY
At the beginning of the 20th century,
counties had not been in the position to
develop water. Water development had
been accomplished by private individuals,
cities or local districts. County or regional
water authorities, such as had been created
in San Diego and Los Angeles, were an
aggregate of separate, independent agencies
united under an act that gave them a voice
in managing, operating and sharing water
resources based on their assessed value.
Water authorities have the explicit job of
providing water to their customers, but they
do not have the power to control the growth
that increases their customers’ demand for
water. Land-use decisions rest with the
local governments.