California Struggles to Meet its Water Demand
BRIAN NELSON, CNN ANCHOR: Southern California officials are looking to a private company to help manage the state's supply of water, but some fear the move could muddy the waters in the same way deregulation of the electricity industry has. CNN's Jennifer Auther has more.</s>JENNIFER AUTHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sixty to 75 percent of water used at this car wash in West Hollywood, California is recycled.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to be because we're being watched.</s>AUTHER: Watched by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Faced with low rainfall projections in years ahead, the utility is weeks away from completing a deal with K.D.'s (ph) Incorporated. K.D.'s is a financially struggling, privately owned agricultural firm. It owns land in the Mojave Desert, with one of nature's underground water tanks.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It really is, again, a dual program. We are renting storage space to metropolitan to use storage space in our aquifer that certainty exists, and then we are selling metropolitan, indigenous water that's recharging into our property.</s>AUTHER: The deal is part of a seven-prong plan Southern California created to meet a federally imposed deadline in approximately 15 years to become less dependent upon its main water source: the Colorado River. (on camera): California's legal allotment of Colorado River Water is 4.4 million acre-feet a year; but the Golden state is taking upwards of 5.2 million acre-feet a year, officials say, with the difference coming from surplus river water allotted to other arid states, such as Arizona and Nevada. (voice-over): That difference of 800,000 acre-feet would supply 1.6 million Southern California families for a year. But what about the car wash's average $4,000 monthly water bill? Could the K.D.'s deal signal deregulation, which is being blamed for California's current electricity crisis?</s>RONALD GASTELUM, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WATER DISTRICT: I can't imagine that the Metropolitan Water District, a public agency, is going to become totally reliant, or even significantly reliant upon private water purchases.</s>AUTHER: Environmentalists are threatening litigation; they fear K.D.'s will suck out more water than can be replenished. What then?</s>ELDEN HUGHES, SIERRA CLUB: It starts to spread. It goes into the Trilobite's Wilderness -- second-largest herd of big-horn sheep -- and dries up their springs.</s>AUTHER: The water district and K.D.'s have proposed a system of monitoring wells to ensure the water table does not drop severely; but critics wonder if, in the future, consumer demand won't compromise controlling efforts. Jennifer Auther, CNN, Los Angeles.