Paper Watery-yD oes Orange County Have a Reliable Future?

a, b & c) Response: Will be implemented. 'The City has and will continue to dedicated time and resources to review and respond to the LAFCO process as necessary. Grand Jury's Recommendation 4: Each Orange County retail and wholesale water agency should affirm its commitment to a fair-share financial responsibility in completing the emergency water supply network for the entire County. The entire County should be prepared together for any conditions of drought, natural or hu man-caused disaster, or any other catastrophic disruption. WEROC should commence meetin!gs of all parties, to facilitate consensus on an equitable funding/financing agreement. (Finding F4 a & b) Response: This recommendation is already being implemented. The Water Emergency Response Organization of Orange County (WEROC) has been established to conduct emergency planning and preparedness at the regional level and response to disaster type events that impact the water and wastewater agencies within the County. WEROC participates with Regional and statewide forums as well. Each retailer also has plans and activities they conduct to be in a state of emergency preparedness. The retail agencies also work together to support one another through the network of emergency interties between agencies that allow water to be shuttled back and forth during emergency situations. WEROCts focus and the focus of emergency planning is to improve "system reliability", the ability to continue meeting demands when parts of the water system have suffered outages. This is distinguished against "supply" reliability which has to do with having supplies to deliver through the system. With respect to regional system reliability, Orange County has been successful in requesting MET to improve the reliability of the Diemer Filtration Plant in Yorba Linda. MET is in the process of making substantial investments to protect the plant from being damaged by seismic shaking. The Diemer Plant treats nearly all of the imported drinking water in Orange County. The response to drought situations are included when agencies complete their Urban Water Management Plans. Responses must include supply analyses for normal years, single dry years and multiple dry years and must also include drought response measures for up to a 50% level of shortage. The Urban Water Management Plans address many of the issues raised by the Grand Jury.