Das Williams First District Board of Directors Janet Wolf County Administration Building Second District*

Published: August 22, 2017 5 pages

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⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.

⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.

Note: Missing finding numbers detected: F2, F3, F4, F7, F8

Findings and Recommendations 4 findings

No single entity has decision or enforcement power within Santa Barbara County to lead regional planning. The Water Agency Board agrees with this finding.

Related Recommendations (1)

That the Santa Barbara County Water Agency be designated as the permanent lead agency of the Santa Barbara County Cooperating Partners and granted enforcement power to ensure reliability of Santa Barbara County water supplies. The recommendation will not be implemented. Organizationally, the County Water Agency has no statutory authority over the various water purveyors in the County, unless and until the authority were to change, this recommendation is not feasible. To have the powers recommended, either Legislation at the State level would be needed, or the purveyors would have to agree in writing to grant the Agency this authority which currently has a low likelihood of occurring. While each purveyor does have authority over certain water sources that they own and control, there are other sources that are more regionally operated. For example, the State Water Project is controlled by the State of California, and the Central Coast Water Authority (CCWA) delivers the water to the participants. However, as noted in the Grand Jury's 2015-16 Report "Lake Cachuma, Protecting a Valuable Resource, You can't Drink Paper Water", the County Water Agency is pursuing the Contract renewal for the Cachuma Project as approved by the Board of Directors of the County Water Agency on May 2, 2017. As responded by the County Water Agency Board, the County Water Agency strongly believes a scientifically based yield curve is needed for Lake Cachuma to ensure that a stable supply is available for the design drought in concert with the parameters and principles that the Cachuma Project was based on. In doing so, the other various supplies can be used to make up the differences in the supplies, perhaps in conjunction with demand management be each purveyor if needed.

Critical pipeline infrastructure, including redundancy, has not been developed throughout southern Santa Barbara County. The Water Agency Board agrees with this finding.

Related Recommendations (1)

That critical pipeline infrastructure, including redundancy, be developed throughout southern Santa Barbara County. The recommendation will not be implemented. The Board understands and agrees with the Recommendation of the Grand Jury, but the County Water Agency is not the entity to undertake this action. The Cachuma Operations and Maintenance Board (COMB) is a Joint Powers Agency (JPA) consisting of the South Coast Cachuma Purveyors and is the entity that operates and maintains the South Coast Conduit. The Board also Attachment B recognizes that this project would be extremely costly, however, through a concerted planning effort, the County Water Agency can partner with COMB and its member agencies to be in a position to assist with grants, either directly through a new Water Service Contract with the Bureau of Reclamation or through the IRWMP process.

Funding under Propositions 50, 84, and 1E has not yet been granted to the County of Santa Barbara for the Cooperating Partners of Santa Barbara Integrated Regional Water Management's prioritized list of water supply projects. The Water Agency Board agrees with the finding. While the County and the County Water Agency has received funding under these Propositions in the past, the most recent list of prioritized water supply / drought projects has not yet been funded. Past funding for water, wastewater, and flood control funding is listed below. PROPOSITION 50 Project Proponent Grant Award Project COMB Modified SCC Upper Reach Project $3,200,000 Carpinteria Sanitary District Bluffs Sewer Relocation $1,250,000 Central Zone Pipeline Improvements & Demonstration Aquifer Storage & Carpinteria Valley Water District $2,000,000 Recovery Well Casmalia Community Services District Water System Retrofit Project $631,700 Wastewater Treatment Plant City of Guadalupe $4,750,000 Improvement Project Santa Barbara Flood Control District / Lower Mission Creek Flood Control & $1,000,000 City of Santa Barbara Restoration Project Wastewater Treatment Plant Expansion City of Santa Maria $4,800,000 Project, Phase 2 Santa Barbara County Agricultural Santa Ynez River Arundo Removal $100,000 Commissioner's Office Project Wastewater Treatment Plant Effluent Cuyama Community Services District $279,800 Disinfection Project Cuyama Community Services District Water Supply Improvement Project $363,500 Fairview Avenue/San Pedro Creek Goleta Sanitary District $1,500,000 Sewer Line Relocation Project Aguifer Storage & Recovery - San Goleta Water District $400,000 Ricardo Well Rehabilitation Project Recycled Water Tank & System Laguna Sanitary District $525,000 Improvement Project Vandenberg Village Community Lompoc Regional Wastewater $4,000,000 Services District Reclamation Plant Upgrade Project TOTAL $24,800,000 Attachment B PROPOSITION 84 Round 1 - Planning Project Proponent Grant Award Project Santa Barbara County IRWM Plan Update $357,807 Carpinteria Water & Sanitation Districts, Santa Barbara County/South Coast $98,770 Montecito Sanitation District, Goleta Water Sub-Region Recycled Water & Sanitation Districts, Goleta West Development Plan Sanitation District, City of Santa Barbara, Heal The Ocean City of Santa Maria, City of Guadalupe, Groundwater Basin Assessment in $99,160 Laguna County Sanitation District Support of a Salt and Nutrient Management Plan TOTAL $555,737 PROPOSITION 84 Round 1 – Implementation Project Proponent Project Grant Award City of Lompoc Lompoc Valley Leak Detection & Repair $171,428 Project City of Santa Maria Untreated Water Landscape Irrigation Project $521,428 City of Santa Maria LeakWatch Project $191,428 City of Goleta San Jose Creek Capacity Improvement & Fish $1,202,428 Passage Project Central Coast Water Authority Water Supply Reliability & Infrastructure $321,428 Improvement Project Goleta Sanitary District Wastewater Treatment Plan Upgrade $521,428 City of Guadalupe Recycled Water Feasibility Study $71,428 TOTAL $3,000,996 PROPOSITION 84 Drought Round Project Proponent Project Grant Award City of Santa Barbara Recycled Water Enhancement Project $1,045,222 Lake Cachuma Drought Pumping Facility COMB $1,037,842 Project Santa Barbara County Water Agency Grant Administration $41,500 TOTAL $2,124,564 Attachment B

Related Recommendations (1)

That the funding applied for by the County of Santa Barbara on behalf of the Cooperating Partners of Santa Barbara County Integrated Regional Water Management is actively pursued. The recommendation has been implemented. The County Office of Emergency Management in conjunction with Senator Hannah Beth Jackson, Assemblywoman Monique Limon, the State Governor's Office of Emergency Services (OES), and the County Water Agency held a series of meetings on this issue to work together to deliver the State a list of projects for better water reliability. That action, along with an on-going process within the Integrated Regional Water Management Plan (IRWMP) to apply for funding continues. The next IRWMP funding round is expected in 2018.

None of the Santa Barbara County south coast water purveyors has established capital replacement accounts. The Water Agency Board lacks the information necessary to agree or disagree with this finding, therefore, pursuant to Penal Code section 933.05(a), the Board responds to this finding by partially agreeing and partially disagreeing. The Board does not have the financial information from each of the south coast water purveyors to determine if any purveyors have established a capital replacement account and is not aware of any separately established accounts.

Related Recommendations (1)

That each Santa Barbara County south coast water purveyor establish and fund a restricted capital replacement account. The recommendation will not be implemented. The Board understands and agrees with the Recommendation of the Grand Jury, but the County Water Agency is not the entity to undertake this action. Pursuant to Penal Code section 933.05(c) the recommendation addresses budgetary matters over which the Board has no decision- making authority. Therefore, while the Board agrees with the Recommendation, it will not be able to implement the Recommendation, but will encourage the purveyors to implement the Recommendation. Attachment B

* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.