For the most part, both Rainbow Municipal Water District and Fallbrook Public Utility District buy their water from the same place.  The simplified version is that they both buy their water from the San Diego County Water Authority–which buys their water from Metropolitan Water District controlled by the California State Water Resources Control Board, and blah blah blah…

The California State Water Resources Control Board has now laid out the plan to execute Gov. Jerry Brown’s 25% mandatory cutback.  Some areas will be mandated to cut more, others less. In my community of Fallbrook, which calls itself the Avocado Capital of the World, the cutback percentage is listed as 36%.

According to one of the county supervisors who spoke at the San Diego County Water Authority meeting on April 23, “These cutbacks are going to be crippling.”  Especially crippling for those residents, and businesses, who rely on the water to make a living.

In my opinion, there seems to be much more information published about the potential merger than in devising a long-term plan to store and recycle local water.  The overall interest, both by the agencies and by the local public, seems to be directed towards the pro and con of a possible merger—instead of the more critical issue, which is whether we’ll even have enough water to talk about.  Waiting for rain and hoping for a “miracle March” that never happened don’t seem to be solutions.  And letting reservoirs go unfilled because “we don’t need them yet” seems shortsighted and foolish.

So the question is—when are Rainbow and FPUD going to stop fighting each other, and start working together to ensure that our local residents don’t have to have Porta Potties in our driveways?

Their next meetings:

FPUD: Monday, April 27, 4 p.m., 909 East Mission Road

Rainbow: Tuesday, April 28, 1 p.m., 3707 Old Highway 395

See you there!