San Diego Is About to Get a $6 Billion Water Bill — And Nobody Is Talking About It Honestly

Pure Water San Diego promises water independence for generations.

But with costs ballooning, rate hikes imminent, and political questions unanswered, SanDiegans deserve a full accounting before the bills get any larger.

Morena Water Treatment Plan

San Diegans are used to paying more than most Americans for just about everything —
housing, gas, groceries. But a bill is coming that will make those familiar grievances look
modest. Over the next four years, the average San Diego household faces a 63 percent
increase in water rates and a 31 percent increase in wastewater charges. Not because of
drought surcharges or emergency conservation orders. Because of a single infrastructure
project that most residents have never fully understood — and that the city has never
adequately explained to the people who will bear its costs for the next twenty years.
Pure Water San Diego is the largest construction project in city history. Its goal is
admirable: reduce San Diego’s catastrophic dependence on imported water by recycling
wastewater into clean, safe drinking water at a new facility near Miramar Reservoir. When
fully operational in the mid-2030s, the program will produce 83 million gallons of purified
water per day, cutting the city’s reliance on the Colorado River and Northern California from
roughly 85 percent of its supply to around 50 percent. For a region that has watched the
Colorado River shrink under drought and over-allocation for two consecutive decades, that
promise is real, urgent, and worth pursuing.
What is not being discussed openly is what the project is actually costing — and who is
carrying that burden. The Phase 1 budget, approved by the City Council in 2021, was $1.14
billion. A $115 million contingency fund was built in to absorb surprises. By late 2024,

tunneling crews drilling beneath Interstate 805 had struck severe flooding, construction
inflation had driven up the cost of steel, concrete, and labor, and the project had burned
through virtually its entire contingency reserve. Confirmed overruns reached $130 million.
The total program cost through 2035 has now ballooned to $6 billion, up from an original
estimate of roughly $1.5 billion. The city’s own independent budget analysts warned that
without the full proposed rate increases, the Public Utilities Department faced the real risk of
financial collapse.
That warning landed quietly. There was no town hall. No sustained public debate. No
citywide reckoning with what a 63 percent rate hike means for a working family in City
Heights, a small restaurant in North Park, or a senior living on a fixed income in Clairemont.
The city issued notices, held the required public hearings, and moved on. The rate increases
are now being phased in without the public scrutiny a decision of this magnitude deserves.
This is not an argument against Pure Water San Diego. Water security is not a luxury,
and the investment in a reliable local supply will pay dividends for generations. But it is an
argument for honesty — the kind of direct, plainspoken accounting that San Diegans
received when asked to vote on stadium bonds, convention center expansions, or pension
reforms. Infrastructure that lands on every household’s monthly bill deserves the same
standard of civic transparency and open debate.
There is also the question of how the project was built politically. Its construction
contracts are governed by a Project Labor Agreement — a union labor arrangement
effectively mandated through state legislation introduced by then-Assemblyman Todd
Gloria, now the city’s Mayor. Non-union contractors were largely sidelined from bidding.
Whether that arrangement raised project costs, and by how much, has never been
independently audited for the public record. In a project already running $130 million over
budget, that is a question every ratepayer has a right to ask.

What this city learned from the High Speed Rail experience should be instructive here.
Megaprojects with noble intentions, inadequate oversight, and opaque cost management
have a way of becoming generational financial burdens. California’s rail project was sold to
voters at one price and attempted at multiples of that figure. The political will to ask hard
questions early was absent. The consequences are still unfolding.
Pure Water San Diego is not High Speed Rail. It is more locally controlled, more
practically grounded, and more necessary. But the familiar pattern — escalating costs,
political maneuvering, and thin public communication — demands scrutiny before the bills
grow any larger. San Diegans are already paying. They deserve to know exactly what they
are paying for.