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Compton
Strikes Deal to Buy Water from Bellflower
As drought
continues to ravage water supplies and drive up prices, agreement expected
to save the city big bucks
By
Allison Jean Eaton
Bulletin
Staff Writer
COMPTON – A
deal city officials recently struck with the city of Bellflower to
lease part of that city’s water rights is expected to provide “huge” savings,
according to a water department official.
Compton will lease 1,006 acre-feet of Bellflower’s groundwater at
a cost of $100 per acre-foot for the 2007-08 fiscal year, which ends June
30.
The total cost will be $100,600, which will yield a savings of roughly
$147,000, according to a staff report.
The Compton Municipal Water District pumps about 60 percent of its
water from the ground and purchases the remaining 40 percent from the Metropolitan
Water District (MWD), which is imported at a cost of $508 an acre-foot.
The water Compton is leasing from Bellflower will be used in place
of water the city would have had to purchase from MWD, which is where the
savings comes in.
Michael Harvey, a project manager with the Compton Municipal Water
Department, said that with the additional costs of pumping and treating
the water, the actual cost of the water from Bellflower will end up being
between $250 and $300 per acre-foot – still far below the $508 an
acre-foot MWD is charging for imported water.
The Water Replenishment District of Southern California regulates
the amount of water each city is able to pump from groundwater supplies.
A city can lease its rights to portions of its share of the groundwater
it knows will go unused because only a portion of what’s not used
can be rolled over to the next year. This way, the city – in this
case Bellflower – can turn a profit.
Compton secured the deal by being the successful bidder, Harvey said.
The deal was approved by the City Council at the Jan. 22 meeting.
As the scarcity of water increases, water prices continue to climb.
MWD’s price just went up this year to $508, and the district has
plans to increase that from 10 percent to 14 percent in 2009.
A new study shows that climate change is a big culprit in the severe
western water crisis. Scientists wrote in a paper published Jan. 30 in
Science, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific academic
journals, 60 percent of the changes in the West’s water cycle are
linked to increased atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Shortages in Southern California are additionally being fueled by
a 2007 court ruling limiting water supplies from Northern California
to protect endangered fish.
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