North County residents urged to conserve water

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published February 8, 2006 at 9:00 PM PST

This story was published more than 18 years ago.

Water managers in San Diego's inland north county are watching their reservoir levels anxiously. A shut-down of the Skinner Treatment plant, combined with unusually hot weather, threatens supplies to

Water managers in San Diego's inland north county are watching their reservoir levels anxiously. A shut-down of the Skinner Treatment plant, combined with unusually hot weather, threatens supplies to thousands of customers. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

Graphs on the computers at the Vallecitos Water District in San Marcos show water levels have dropped over 50 percent since the beginning of the week. Planned maintenance work on wont be finished till next week. General Manager Bill Rucker says unless people stop watering their landscapes as requested, local reservoirs will be drained by the weekend. He hopes fire fighting doesn't add to the problem.

Rucker: "A fire would move us to the critical failure point depending on how much water the fire fighting agencies take from the system. The straight line projections we're looking at now shows us at zero sometime in the Saturday, Sunday time frame and fire would accelerate that."

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Rucker says domestic water use is dropping now, as residents realize the severity of the problem. But agriculture is suffering - avocado farmers are afraid their crop wont make it through this unseasonably hot spell. Alison St. John, KPBS News."

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.