Local Supplies Enhance Supply Reliability
Coordinating with 22 member agencies to develop local water resources is a key component of the Water Authority’s mission to provide a safe and reliable water supply. In fact, a growing number of local water sources across the San Diego region are managed by member agencies — and they are critical to ensuring long-term water supply reliability. Local projects reduce demand and reliance on imported supplies and provide local agencies with more control over costs.
Before 1947, the San Diego region relied heavily on local surface water runoff in normal and wet years, and on groundwater pumped from local aquifers during dry years when stream flows shriveled. As the economy and population grew exponentially, local resources became insufficient to meet the region’s water supply needs and the region increasingly turned to imported water supplies.
Local Sources
In recent years, local water agencies have increasingly invested in local supplies such as brackish groundwater, recycled water and water purification. The Water Authority has also invested in seawater desalination. Water supplies from these projects is considered drought-resilient since the projects are primarily independent of precipitation. Today, about 30 percent of the water used across the region is from local supplies – and that number is expected to grow as more water purification projects come online.