Metropolitan Board Adopts Updated Water Plan

The Metropolitan Water District on Tuesday unveiled a revised long-term plan to protect the region from potential water shortages during the record statewide drought.

Key points of Water Tomorrow, Metropolitan’s updated 2015 Integrated Resources Plan, include identifying resources for future investment and lowering demand through conservation, water recycling and other actions.

“The key to managing risk and future uncertainty is through an adaptive management strategy that stabilizes and maintains the region’s imported supplies through the State Water Project and Colorado River Aqueduct, builds on our successful conservation ethic, and sustains and develops new local supplies,” MWD General Manager Jeffrey Kightlinger said.

“We also need to pursue water transfers and exchanges, increase storage to manage drought, and look at other supply actions,” he said.

Tuesday’s decision follows nearly a year of analysis of regional supply reliability through 2040, while also identifying targets for conservation and local supplies.

The plan’s goal is a strategy that would manage water flow and export regulations in the near term and achieve a long-term solution to the ecosystem and water supply reliability issues in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The MWD provides water to more than 19 million people in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego and other counties.

--City News Service, photo via Shutterstock