West Basic Municipal Water District

Planning

Water Shortage Allocation Plan

 

Metropolitan Water District’s Board of Directors approved the Water Supply Allocation Plan in February 2008. It is based on a guiding principle developed almost ten years prior as part of their Water Surplus and Drought Management Plan.

“Metropolitan will encourage storage of water during periods of surplus and work jointly with its member agencies to minimize the impacts of water shortages on the region’s retail consumers and economy during periods of shortage.”

Fairness in allocation and minimizing regional hardship to retail water consumers remained central themes in the development of a specific formula for allocating shortages across southern California. The formula uses different adjustments and credits to balance impacts of shortage at the retail level, where local supplies can vary dramatically, and provide equity on the wholesale level among member agencies. It also attempts to take into account; growth in demand, local investments, changes in local supply conditions, the reduction in potable water demand from recycled water, and the implementation of water conservation programs.

Based closely on Metropolitan’s methodology, West Basin’s Water Shortage Allocation Plan model, adopted by the Board of Directors in April 2009, determines each customer agency’s share of West Basin’s allocation from Metropolitan.

Allocation Penalty Rates

West Basin will enforce customer agency allocations through a penalty rate structure similar to what West Basin is subject to in Metropolitan’s allocation plan. Penalty rates will only be assessed to the extent that an agency’s total annual usage exceeds its total annual allocation. No billing or assessment of penalty rates will take place until the end of the twelve-month allocation period. Penalty rates are in addition to the base rate of the water purchased.

Table 1 demonstrates that the penalty rate structure is an ascending block structure that provides a lower penalty for minor overuse of allocations and a higher penalty for major overuse of allocations. The actual penalty rates shall be based on the official Metropolitan Tier 2 water rate in effect the last day in June of the twelve-month allocation period.

Table 1. West Basin Allocation Penalty Rates