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FOSTERING RESILIENCY
S
an Diego County blossomed in the
decades following World War II, watered
by cheap and seemingly endless sup-
plies delivered first through the Colorado River
Aqueduct and eventually through the State
Water Project. Universities sprang up. The
defense industry boomed. Major League
Baseball arrived. Horton Plaza gave the fast-
growing legions of suburbanites a downtown
destination after San
Diego’s then-Mayor
Pete Wilson and devel-
oper Ernest Hahn
helped resurrect the
city’s center. The
county’s population
more than tripled
between 1940 and
1960, then nearly dou-
bled again by 1980.
2
Thanks to the big
investments in pipes
and canals a generation
earlier, the region didn’t lack access to water
for its fast-growing economy.
But a dark cloud loomed on the horizon and
steadily became more menacing. San Diego
County had become far too reliant on one sup-
49
plier of i
mported water: The Los Angeles-
based Metropolitan Water District of
Southern California provided up to 95 per-
cent of the San Diego region’s water. To
compound the problem, the water rights to
more than half of the water that San Diego
County purchased each year actually
“belonged” to other
MWD member agencies
that weren’t using the amount reserved for
them. That over-reliance put the region’s
economy and quality of
life at risk – and eventu-
ally resulted in an ambi-
tious new strategy to
secure San Diego
County’s future. Today,
the visionary approach
to diversify the region’s
water supplies adopted
by the Water Authority is
a national example of
how regions can take
control of their water
resources through
sound investments and a tenacious commit-
ment to reliability.
The situation was far different in the late
1980s. Confidence in San Diego County’s
water supply system was starting to crumble
Chapter 9:
Reliability Through Diversification
“San Diego’s experience
demonstrates that for
communities reliant on
imported water from
vulnerable ecosystems,
diversifying their supply
portfolios with an emphasis
on local sustainability is
the smart path forward.”
Carpe Diem West
A nonprofit organization of
water managers,
scientists and conservationists (2013)
1
Former California Governor and San Diego Mayor
Pete Wilson poses with his statue at Horton Plaza
in 2007
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© Nelvin C. Cepeda/U-T San Diego/ZUMAPRESS.com