Civil Grand Jury Response – Our Water Account is OVERDRAWN.DOCX.pdf

If extended drought conditions lead the City of Santa Cruz to execute Stage 5 of its Water Shortage Contingency Plan, it will have extreme economic impacts on all residents throughout the County. __ AGREE _X_ PARTIALLY DISAGREE __ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): The City of Santa Cruz’s Water Shortage Contingency Plan is implemented as needed and at the stage appropriate to respond to forecasted drought conditions. A major goal of implementing curtailments when needed is to protect water supplies necessary to ensure public health and safety. Without water supply augmentation that is planned and under development, should supply conditions be severe enough (presumably after multiple consecutive years of drought), water use for commercial uses would be prioritized for greater levels of curtailment than water for human consumption, sanitation and public health and safety uses. If Stage 5 water curtailments were ever required, water users in the City of Santa Cruz water service area, and those owning or working in water-using businesses such as hotels, motels, guest houses, vacation rentals or restaurants would be greatly impacted by those curtailments. Whether the economic impact of such curtailment would be felt county- wide is not known.

Inter-district water-sharing plans spanning North County and Mid-County that could benefit all residents have existed since 2015 and deserve to be accelerated. __ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE _X_ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): A finding that implies that work on water transfers has not been ongoing and that it should be accelerated is a significant misrepresentation. Beginning in 2016, Santa Cruz and Soquel Creek Water District developed and piloted a water transfer project agreement that was renewed and extended in 2021. Implementation of that agreement involved significant work to assess the compatibility of surface water from Santa Cruz with groundwater from Soquel Creek Water District to ensure transferred water was safe for use by Soquel Creek customers. Following completion of this work, and work with the State Division of Drinking Water to amend Soquel Creek’s operating permit to include use of transferred surface water, water has been transferred (when supplies have been available), to allow wells in the western part of the Soquel Creek service area to rest. The City’s experience working with Soquel Creek on water transfers has created a model for how the operation of water sharing agreements could be developed throughout the region. It is currently being used as a model in the development of project feasibility work plans for the potential transfer of water between water providers in the Santa Margarita groundwater basin area.

Establishing a strategic groundwater reserve, as described in documents from the City of Santa Cruz, is a well-understood and achievable first step. __ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE _X_ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): In theory, collecting and storing surface water flows during wet conditions in local groundwater basins is an obvious solution to local water supply reliability and groundwater sustainability issues. In practice, however, many factors can influence the success of this approach. The most obvious examples are the geological characteristics of local aquifers and their ability to accept and retain injected water, and, of course, a reliable supply of local surface water to use as a source of supply. Additionally, the implication of this finding is that steps should have already been taken to implement storing available surface water in local aquifers, rather than acknowledging that progress has already occurred. For example, water stored by Santa Cruz during the winter of 2022 is being used by Santa Cruz as part of summer 2022’s supply. Also, as noted in the response to finding F3, it has taken seven years of consistent and careful work to reach a point where ASR has been demonstrated to work in two wells in the Santa Cruz Mid-County Groundwater Basin. Additional evaluations to expand this supply augmentation strategy are ongoing.

The City of Santa Cruz’s completion of the water rights revision project is a critical element of enabling district collaboration in support of county-level drought resilience. _X_ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE __ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): The Water Rights Project approved by the City Council, along with certification of the Final Environmental Impact Report, in late 2021 is the culmination of more than a decade of work to update the City’s water rights. Changes made address 21st century operating challenges and incorporate critically important bypass flows for threatened steelhead trout and endangered coho salmon. Among other things, the Project opens up and aligns the places of use for Santa Cruz’s San Lorenzo River water rights, which enables (but doesn’t require) water sharing among water providers in mid and northern Santa Cruz County.

Limited inter-district water transfers have been achieved and serve as proof of concept. __ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE _X_ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): It is not correct to say that the limited experience with water transfers between Santa Cruz and Soquel Creek demonstrates that this approach can work elsewhere. As noted in the responses to findings F3 and F4 above, numerous technical factors contribute to the success or failure of water transfer proposals and their ability to contribute to increased drought resiliency in mid and northern Santa Cruz County.

Existing City of Watsonville and City of Santa Cruz wastewater resources are only partially utilized to address passive well resting and saltwater intrusion issues. __ AGREE _X_ PARTIALLY DISAGREE __ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): It is correct to note that City of Santa Cruz’s wastewater resources that could potentially be used as part of a recycled water drought-resiliency project are not fully allocated and are available for potential development. We understand this Finding to be incorrect for the City of Watsonville.

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 Grand Jury correctly finds that substantial communication and collaboration occurs among local water agencies, but incorrectly finds that collaboration is narrow and limited in scope. Santa Cruz County’s water agency staffs work well and effectively together over a wide range of topics, including forming collaborative staffing groups to support local groundwater sustainability planning, working on regional grant applications and their implementation, collaborating among surface water providers to update the state- required source water protection focused Sanitary Survey for the San Lorenzo River watershed, engaging in ongoing communications and coordination about water conservation, drought messaging, and education and outreach and, over many decades, financially supporting the Regional Water Management Foundation that facilitates a range of collaborative efforts including IRWM planning.

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): A review of the problem statement in the 2015 Water Supply Advisory Committee Final Report on Agreements and Recommendations demonstrates that this statement is incorrect (see of the document in reference #3 in the Grand Jury’s report). For Santa Cruz, water conservation has been a long-standing commitment and an element of its water supply reliability strategy, but the Committee’s problem statement clearly indicated that conservation alone cannot solve Santa Cruz’s water supply reliability problem. Since City Council approval of the Water Supply Advisory Committee’s

The individual water supply districts lack funding, resources, and charters to develop county-centric drought-resilience infrastructure. __ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE _X_ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): The premise underlying this finding is if a water supply district had the funding, resources, and charter to develop county-centric drought resilience infrastructure the problem the Grand Jury has identified would not exist. This premise is false. Individual water agencies in the County do have or have the authority needed to generate the resources and funding needed to address the issue the Grand Jury has described. Many local water agencies are taking steps needed to improve their district’s drought resiliency. As described elsewhere in this response, there is ample evidence that these agencies work effectively together and are continuously demonstrating regional cooperation and collaboration necessary to address the County’s water supply reliability, resiliency and sustainability.

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): Groundwater Sustainability Agencies were formed for a specific purpose and, in many cases, are focused on a specific groundwater basin that may not cover an entire county. Their task is specific to the issues in a particular groundwater basin and to the mandated to plan for and implement strategies to achieve groundwater sustainability in their specific groundwater basins within a 20-year timeframe. Their charters reflect this focus. Staffing and agency resourcing strategies actively engage leaders and technical staffs of local water supply and water resource management agencies to maximize the effectiveness of both the planning process and the implementation of groundwater sustainability plans, which directly and indirectly affect all the agencies involved.

There is no county-level agency chartered to plan, propose, or build regional district-spanning drought-resilience infrastructure. __ AGREE __ PARTIALLY DISAGREE _X_ DISAGREE Response explanation (required for a response other than Agree): The Grand Jury is correct that there is no single agency with county-wide jurisdiction that is responsible for developing and implementing actions to ensure drought resilience. However, the City of Santa Cruz disagrees with the assertion that a central county-level agency would do a better job of planning for and implementing county drought resilience for the following reasons: 1) The Grand Jury’s recommendation for creating a new, single agency is based on the premise that it could and would do something the existing water supply agencies are not doing. The City’s perspective is that: a) Any county-wide drought resiliency system must be built on the foundation of existing water resource management infrastructure and systems. To contemplate any other approach would be impractical due to the cost of duplicating existing facilities and systems. b) The water resources needed to actually achieve drought resiliency in the County are already in use by existing water providers in meeting the needs of their customers. c) Even if funding for infrastructure and systems apart from those already in existence was identified, there are no additional, un-allocated water resources available to be developed and deployed to produce drought resiliency. d) So the new agency would have to work so closely with existing water providers in achieving its mission, making it difficult to imagine how this additional layer of government would add value or have any real scope for exercising authority over existing water agencies, or their infrastructure, systems or resources. 2) Because of Santa Cruz’s geographical isolation and lack of access to any of California’s state water resources and facilities, existing water agency leaders know that regional and individual agency drought resiliency solutions are going to have to come from working together. As demonstrated in several responses to the Grand Jury’s report, regional elected officials and staff of these agencies are already and have been for years actively engaged in this work.