San Diego Now Has So Much Water That It's Selling It

[mahatmakanejeeves]

The Wall Street Journal
‪@wsj.com‬

With the Colorado River in crisis, Arizona and Nevada are turning to an unconventional life line: the ocean water off California’s golden beaches.

San Diego Now Has So Much Water That It’s Selling It
With the Colorado River in crisis, Arizona and Nevada are turning to an unconventional life line: the ocean water off California’s golden beaches.
on.wsj.com
9:07 AM · Apr 16, 2026

With the Colorado River in crisis, Arizona and Nevada are turning to an unconventional life line: the ocean water off California’s golden beaches.

— The Wall Street Journal (@wsj.com) 2026-04-16T13:07:11.301748Z

[Auggie]

1. Paywall

Is a summary available?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. I know. That's all I have. Usually other sources will

reprint the article. Barring that, I pull out my library card and head for my local public library's online database. You can pretty much count on your local public library's having The Wall Street Journal. available online.

And good morning.

[Auggie]

3. Thank you

And thanks for bringing that new to our attention. Fascinating turn of events. A while back San Diego had an uncertain water supply.

[sl8]

5. MSN has a copy.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/san-diego-now-has-so-much-water-that-it-s-selling-it/ar-AA20ZZQL

[NNadir]

4. When I lived in San Diego, there were times I felt guilty for flushing the toilet.

Last edited Thu Apr 16, 2026, 12:35 PM - Edit history (1)

If this article is about desalination, which it seems to be, that's an energy intensive enterprise.

[2naSalit]

6. Over the many times...

That I lived in San Diego there was always a water crisis. My mom lived there and she was anal about flushing and bathing, with four daughters - right? We were all happy to move out but were still conservative about water use. We never drank the tap water after leaving mom's and we stopped having illnesses.

Glad they got that figured out because the county continues to grow and all those people need water.

[NNadir]

7. Living in California made me think about water quite a bit, particularly when I thought of the Owen's valley and...

...other places.

I ruminated on subject quite a bit in my environmental thinking over the years, and I remarked on some "out there" ideas here at DU:

The Energy Required to Supply California's Water with Zero Discharge Supercritical Desalination.

If nothing else, it crystalized some ideas about process intensification, the recovery of exergy from primary heat. It is surely in the realm of "never will happen," but it was a nice dream to have, the dry lakes filled, the preservation of the San Joaquin's agricultural productivity, which as I see it now, is doomed, because fossil water can only be mined for so long before being depleted.

I have not lived in California for more than 30 years, and visited only periodically, usually for scientific conferences. Nevertheless, some of it remains in my blood. It was a place to which I went to heal when I needed healing.

[2naSalit]

8. Oddly...

I was conceived there but born across the country. I have never had very good experiences there and found that I wanted to leave shortly after arriving each time.

Was just, minutes ago, talking to a sibling who still lives there and they said they don't think selling the water is a very good idea. They said they flew in yesterday, they fly a lot, and the reservoirs looked pretty good but this is April and that could change by the end of May.

Owens Valley always intrigued me. I learned about its water depletion when I traveled the length of the valley every week in my semi... blows me away at how that all happened.

I decided not to be one of the many needing water in the west and moved to the other end of the country hoping my final years will be free of water worries, pr at least those kind of water worries.

[NNadir]

9. Having lived in LA at the time it came out, and being aware of some of the history of Mulholland, the movie...

...Chinatown was one of my favorite films ever, a fictionalized version of those realities.