Santa Cruz Grand Jury Mga Response to Civil Grand Jury Report Santa Cruz Mid-County Groundwater Agency Fri, Aug 19,

There is an urgent need to create a county-wide drought-resilient water storage and delivery infrastructure. __ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE _X_ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): The urgency for, and availability of, drought resilient water projects varies significantly throughout the County. There is not a simple one-size-fits-all solution as this finding implies. Through the projects already underway, the water supply agencies are making significant progress at tackling water supply security.

Establishing a strategic groundwater reserve, as described in documents from the City of Santa Cruz, is a well-understood and achievable first step. __ AGREE _X_ PARTIALLY DISAGREE __ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): This Finding does not describe what the “establishment of a groundwater reserve” is a first step in achieving. The MGA does identify “maintaining a drought reserve” as part of the Sustainability Goal included in the Groundwater Sustainability Plan. The Groundwater Sustainability Plan outlines several critical projects that should happen concurrently for the Basin to reach sustainability, not one before the other as the Finding implies. One of these projects is the City of Santa Cruz Water Department’s Aquifer Storage and Recovery project in the Mid-County Basin. The Pure Water Soquel Project is another.

Limited interdistrict water transfers have been achieved and serve as proof of concept. __ AGREE _X_ PARTIALLY DISAGREE __ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): The MGA recognizes that interdistrict water transfers, in this case specifically between the City of Santa Cruz Water Department and Soquel Creek Water District, may have a role in the sustainability of the Basin. Water Transfers are included as a Project in the Groundwater Sustainability Plan. Already, water has been transferred four (4) times since 2015 with an average of approximately 34 acre-feet per year. How well these transfers serve as a “proof of concept” of any particular management strategy is questionable. Modeling by the City of Santa Cruz demonstrated that there is not available surface water to provide the reliability required by Soquel Creek Water District to meet their needs. Therefore, without the addition of other water supply projects, water transfers will not cause the Basin to achieve sustainability. Many factors can influence the potential success of a large-scale water transfer program which have not been fully explored, including the geologic characteristics of the aquifer and its ability to retain water for later use by the City of Santa Cruz as part of their drought resiliency efforts.

Existing City of Watsonville and City of Santa Cruz wastewater resources are only partially utilized to address passive well resting and saltwater intrusion issues. _X_ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE __ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): The MGA agrees that the City of Santa Cruz wastewater resources are not fully utilized. The MGA is not directly involved with the City of Watsonville and Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency on their wastewater resources and cannot respond to that item.

Each agency described in this report communicates well with neighboring agencies, but collaboration is limited and narrow in scope. __ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE _X_ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): The agencies that comprise the MGA, as well as the neighboring Santa Margarita Groundwater Agency (SMGWA), do communicate well. However, the breadth of collaboration between agencies varies depending on opportunities for mutual benefit and in some cases is quite comprehensive. The development of the two Groundwater Sustainability Agencies as Joint Powers Authorities (JPAs) in these adjacent Basin involved, and continues to involve, ample collaboration amongst the participating agencies. The JPAs are legally binding agreements that were negotiated extensively throughout their development. The inclusion of individual agency projects within the Groundwater Sustainability Plan involved regional prioritization, and jointly funded groundwater modeling. The two GSAs partnered on a regional Data Management System (DMS) to collect and store all the relevant water data from each water agency – the DMS serves as an example of a collaboration among the agencies. The MGA has a seat at the County’s Senate Bill 552 drought response working group, as does the SMGWA, Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency (PVWMA), and other local stakeholders. The collaboration between the Soquel Creek Water District and City of Santa Cruz Water Department is particularly extensive. The water transfers required jointly- managed studies before and during the transfers, and the associated legal agreements. They are currently working together on modeling the operational opportunities for their water management projects within the Basin. Once the projects are built, the operators will need to be in constant communication. In short, regional collaboration is ongoing and can in no way be described as “limited and narrow in scope.”

Agency communications to the public emphasize conservation and sustainability while downplaying agency planning to achieve drought resilience. __ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE _X_ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): Since its inception in 2016, the MGA has done extensive outreach including public meetings and workshops, tabling at public events, brochures, postcards, a tour of facilities, a website, an email listserve, radio interviews and newspaper editorials. Due to the mandate for a Groundwater Sustainability Agency as required under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014, the primary focus of the outreach was always, appropriately, groundwater sustainability. However, for this Basin in particular, there is no separating groundwater sustainability from drought resilience, they are one in the same. If groundwater elevations along the coast were to drop due to drought, severe damage would be done to the Basin by intruding seawater. This fact was communicated repeatedly. The MGA has never communicated that water conservation alone could provide groundwater sustainability or drought resilience. The GSP was evaluated using a climate scenario that includes several periods of drought, to ensure that minimum thresholds will continue to be met.

The individual water supply districts lack funding, resources, and charters to develop county-centric drought-resilience infrastructure. _X_ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE __ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree):

The Groundwater Sustainability Management agencies lack the charters, staff, and resources to plan or execute a county-wide drought-resilience strategy. _X_ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE __ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): While this is true on an individual Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) level, it is important to note that the vast majority of the County population lives in or is served by a water agency that participates in, one of the GSAs. Therefore, regardless of lacking charters, staff and resources, the collective impacts of the GSAs and their member agencies working towards achieving groundwater sustainability will have a nearly county-wide positive impact on drought resilience.

There is no county-level agency chartered to plan, propose, or build regional district-spanning drought-resilience infrastructure. _X_ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE __ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): There are many agencies that collectively span the entire County, and there have been county-level efforts for decades to help our region become more water secure. Another county-level agency is not necessary, and potentially not even desirable, due to the proven collaborative efforts of the local water agencies and the high cost of creating and running an agency. ADDITIONAL FINDINGS (invited responses from the Mid- County Groundwater Agency Point of Contact)