SAN DIEGO — At a time when we're being asked to conserve water, the City of San Diego released nearly 250 million gallons of water out of the Hodges Reservoir. It’s not pouring into storage areas where it can be used later. Instead, it’s heading into the San Dieguito River where it'll be gone for good. The city says past rainfall and a state mandate made the release necessary - citing safety reasons.
The lake has been closed since the spring when repairs started to the 104 year old dam to fix cracks and defects. But here's the thing, in order to make those repairs, the water level had to be lowered to 275 feet. So earlier this year, the reservoir level was lowered by approximately 18 feet. When that happened, the city said, "no water was wasted in the process of lowering the water level."
So that got us wondering - why is water being wasted this time?
We reached out to the city multiple times on Wednesday – both through email and phone calls - asking for an interview with someone from the Public Utilities department. We started contacting them at 9:06 a.m. Finally, at 3:57 p.m., a spokesperson got back to us saying no one could do an on-camera interview with us today.
But the city did release a statement saying in part:
“Due to hydraulic constraints, the San Diego County Water Authority's water pumps cannot transfer water to other reservoirs when the water level dips below 280 feet.”
Since the water level was dropped earlier this year to 275 feet to start the repairs, the pumps could not be used. In a follow-up email, the city spokesman confirmed that none of the water released this week was sent to reservoirs for later use.
Instead, all of it is heading for the ocean.