Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/850954
E n s u r i n g a S t r o n g F u t u r e 23 | P a g e Cost of Water Future Wastewater Treatment Water Supply and Reliability Unique District Attributes CHALLE Challenges The District faces many external challenges which can impact operations and ultimately rates. Some of the challenges impact all districts while some are unique to Padre Dam. This fact makes it difficult to draw comparisons among agencies and can cause confusion about why rates vary among districts. Although it cannot control them in the short term, the District must deal with the challenges as best as possible and try to minimize their impact on operations. Long term, the District has been focusing its efforts on developing alternatives for some of these challenges. Minimizing the reliance on external sources helps the District to control its own future. CHALLENGES: Unique District Attributes Certain unique factors differentiate our District from other agencies in the San Diego region and make comparisons impossible; some of these factors include: No Local Water Supply Currently, Padre Dam is 100% reliant on imported drinking water from the San Diego County Water Authority. However, the District is pursuing a water recycling opportunity that would diversify East County's water supply and reduce our dependence on imported water. Our Advanced Water Purification Program could produce up to 30% of East County's current drinking water demands using state-of-the-art technology to purify East County's recycled water. Significant Elevation Changes Padre Dam delivers water to elevations as high as 2,646 feet above sea level. Pumping water to higher elevations requires additional infrastructure (pump stations) which add to the operations and maintenance costs of our distribution system. It also takes a lot of electricity to pump water to higher elevations which affect the cost of providing water. Our pump stations add $20M in infrastructure value to the District. Large Service Area per Customer The size of a service area directly impacts the cost of maintenance. Longer pipelines increase costs of maintenance, replacement and travel time to cover the service area. Our service area covers 72 square miles for approximately 24,300 customers - fewer customers per square foot than our neighboring agencies. Over $700 million (about $28,800 per customer) of infrastructure supports this large service area. CHALLENGES