San Diego's Recycled Water Project Losing $4 Million Per Month With Delays
With consumption challenges including a booming population and pervasive source water scarcity in the region, San Diego has pursued its Pure Water project for years, an ambitious plan to bolster up to one-third of its supply with recycled water by 2035.
With such a lofty goal ahead, one would expect challenges. But few could have predicted the major labor issues that the project has encountered recently.
“San Diego’s long-awaited Pure Water project, a sewage recycling system that would boost the city’s water independence, is facing legal challenges that could last longer and cost more than city officials previously anticipated,” The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. “A dispute that emerged last year over the use of unionized construction workers to build the project became more complex last fall when state lawmakers tried to solve the problem by intervening.”
The lawmakers passed a law to require Pure Water to use a union-friendly labor agreement for any parts of the project that receive state funding. Then, a group of local contractors challenged this requirement with a lawsuit. In a court ruling late last month, a local judge gave those contractors the chance to amend their argument, to the detriment of construction progress.
“Superior Court Judge Richard Strauss gave the contractors two weeks to strengthen their case, that construction of the system should be blocked because of a dispute over the use of non-union workers to build some of it,” per a subsequent report from the Union-Tribune. “Barring a settlement, city officials say, the case could take years to litigate. Meanwhile the cost of the roughly $5 billion Pure Water system is increasing $4 million every month that construction is delayed.”
Those delays show no signs of clearing up. Strauss has scheduled a conference with the attorneys in the case for April 10, 2020. It’s likely that will only mark the next step in an ongoing legal process.
To read more about how drinking water and wastewater projects manage workers, visit Water Online’s Labor Solutions Center.