Lake Hodges Water Flow

A portion of the water from Hodges Reservoir is delivered by a standalone pipeline directly from Hodges Dam to the Bargar Water Treatment Plant, which is jointly operated by the Santa Fe and San Dieguito Districts. The treated water is then delivered to Rancho Santa Fe, Solana Beach, and parts of Encinitas.  Local runoff captured in Hodges represents a significant portion of the Districts’ supplies; and is quite important to these agencies and communities. 

Through the Pumped Storage Facilities, water from Hodges Reservoir can be conveyed, via Olivenhain Reservoir, into the SD County Water Authority’s regional aqueduct system.  The City of San Diego has connections off the regional aqueduct, and it is through this system that the city is able to access its share of local runoff captured in Hodges.

However, the only way to convey water from Hodges in the Water Authority’s regional aqueduct system is to blend it into the water supplied to all its member water agencies from Escondido south to the international border. There is no practical way to parse out Hodges water from other sources conveyed in the aqueduct and deliver Hodges water only to the City of San Diego.  The other water agencies along the aqueduct have objected to having Hodges water blended into the water they receive because of its poor quality.  Formal, binding agreements among all the water agencies establishes water quality thresholds for blending Hodges water into the regional aqueduct, which in practice makes it impossible to move water out of Hodges through that system.  The goal of the water quality projects at Hodges is to remedy water quality impairments there and make it possible for the Hodges-Olivenhain-Regional Aqueduct system to operate as intended.