The Board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the nation’s largest water utility, on Dec. 13, declared all of Southern California an official drought emergency. This paves the way for potential mandatory usage cuts in early 2023, that would affect 19 million people. Directives were issued Dec. 13 for deeper voluntary cuts in water demand.
The Metropolitan Water District (MWD) supplies water to 26 different entities that in turn supply small and large districts of the region, including Los Angeles and San Diego.
The MWD system gets about half its water from the Central Water Project to the north, and from the Colorado River Basin to the East. These supplies both have been down drastically, and already earlier this year the MWD declared an emergency for the seven million people getting water from the Central Water Project, which comes from the run-off of the Sierra Madre Mountains.
