The San Diego County Water Authority announced that Sunday marks 20 years since water officials across the Southwestern U.S. signed the largest water conservation-transfer agreement in the nation’s history, enabling two decades of sourcing clean water from the Colorado River.
Known as the Colorado River Quantification Settlement Agreement, or QSA, the agreements settled decades of dispute over Colorado River water.
In October 2003, the San Diego County Water Authority, Coachella Valley Water District, Imperial Irrigation District, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, state of California and U.S. Department of the Interior completed a historic set of agreements to conserve and transfer Colorado River water.
The QSA provides more than 30 million acre-feet of conserved water to the San Diego region over the life of the agreement.
The San Diego County Water Authority sits on the QSA Joint Powers Authority, the governing board formed under 2003 QSA-related legislation to administer funding of environmental mitigation requirements related to the QSA water transfers.
More information about the QSA-JPA can be found at QSAJPA.org.
City News Service contributed to this article.