The Cachuma Project Contract and Management Whiskey Is For Drinking - But Must We Fight Over Water?1

Observations 13

• OB1
  The websites of the Member Units and SBCWA lack clarity and detail on the Cachuma Project.
• OB2
  The current Contract does not fully address future water management problems such as will arise from climate and other rapid environmental changes.
• OB3
  Provisions in the 2020 Contract will need more frequent updating than those in previous Contracts due to rapid climate change altering the natural conditions affecting water supply.
• OB4
  Under the 1995 Contract, Article 9(g), the required five-year meetings cannot result in increased water diversion to Member Units.
• OB5
  Member Units and SBCWA have expressed support for formal, quantitative methods of decision-making under uncertainty which can identify sources of disagreement, and thus facilitate compromise solutions.
• OB6
  SBCWA and the Member Units agree that meetings of their technical staffs are valuable but disagree over the organizational concerns of past meetings, such as claims of infrequency, non-attendance, non- response and cancellation without notice.
• OB7
  Public understanding and effective operation of the Cachuma Project would be enhanced if key terms in the Contract were defined and used more precisely.
• OB8
  The roles and responsibilities of SBCWA and the Member Units are not clearly defined in the current Contract.
• OB9
  The current Water Year, October 1 to September 30, makes diversion recommendations and decisions difficult because it comes just before the rainy season, when the quantity of water in Cachuma for the next few months is highly unpredictable.
• OB10
  Strengthen the role of SBCWA, as the "lead agency." The 2016-2017 Grand Jury4 recommended one version of this proposal: grant SBCWA enforcement power over County water supplies. The responses from MUs, SBCWA, and the Board of Supervisors all rejected this as undesirable and legally impossible. A weaker version is for the new Contract to allow explicitly for SBCWA to add its own recommendation when sending the MUs’ Water Year request to the Bureau. The MUs’ objections apply to this version also. Several sources told the Jury that, despite the unanimity among the MUs or the strength of their arguments, the Bureau was almost sure to choose a recommendation from SBCWA because it is more familiar and represents the larger entity, which may seem more stable financially. However, SBCWA has "no water customers, water rights, or operational responsibilities with respect to the Cachuma Project."29 Local agencies understand their own needs, constraints and unique powers. They are also closer to the people they serve. Directors of four of the five MUs are elected specifically to manage water supply. The Santa Barbara MU's directors (the City Council) are elected on a range of issues, but water is a major one; these directors, and their appointed Water Commissioners, interact closely with their Water Resources Division. By contrast, SBCWA is a small part of the responsibilities of its elected directors (the Board of Supervisors); the Board will expect reports, but frequent visits and close supervision are unlikely, unless there appear to be urgent problems. Thus, SBCWA will be less sensitive to the concerns of Cachuma Project stakeholders.
• OB11
  Weaken the role of SBCWA. Apart from the arguments just listed, the Jury heard MUs’ claims that the County may be biased because higher Cachuma levels would benefit the Recreation Area, which is a source of County revenue. One suggestion was to restrict SBCWA explicitly to its minimum role in the 1995 Contract: to act as the MUs' agent and convey their requests to the Bureau. This had little support among the MU officials interviewed by the Jury. Another suggestion was for SBCWA to make
• OB12
  A seat at the table for the MUs. In their interviews with the Jury, the most frequent suggestion by MU officials was for MUs and SBCWA to work together; one arena would be the contract negotiation. MU officials understand the Bureau prefers to work with a single partner, but the MUs want that partner to be constantly aware of their concerns and the reasons for them, to represent the MUs' positions firmly. They expect SBCWA to be the sole local signatory, but believe they can make valuable contributions, whether participating in the discussion at the table or just being in the room and available for consultation. 2018-2019 Santa Barbara County Grand Jury 10 Another suggestion was regular meetings of technical staff of the MUs and SBCWA. This step was urged by officials from both the MUs and SBCWA. The letter from County Counsel29 expresses commitment to cooperative work with the MUs which "should occur primarily through staff-to-staff discussions."31 The Jury was told that such meetings had occurred in the recent past, but were sometimes hard to arrange, cancelled with little notice, or poorly attended. A well-organized schedule of meetings could include Bureau representatives from time to time. It was suggested that the new Contract could provide for a "Standard Operating Procedure" whereby the Bureau would agree to follow the recommendations of formal meetings between SBCWA and the MUs when possible, especially concerning diversions; and otherwise give reasons based on legal requirements or the Project's physical limitations. Article 3(b) of the 1995 Contract2 specifies these types of reasons, but does not explicitly require the Bureau to give them. Article 9(g) calls for SBCWA, the Member Units, and the Bureau to meet during the Contract period to discuss "changes to the operations of the Project." This Article is not ideal for the next Contract. First, the meetings are to occur "not more frequently than every five years." This allows meetings to be more than five years apart, perhaps at the whim of a single participant. It also prohibits meetings less than five years apart, even though rapid environmental changes could require emergency responses. Second, these meetings are to "protect the environment and groundwater quality downstream …, conserve Project Water, and promote efficient water management," and they must not "reduce the Available Supply in any Water Year." This ignores the possibility that engineering innovations or better models could lead to increased diversions to MUs without harm to any other Project functions, despite temporarily reducing available supply. Third, the meetings are to be “an open, public process.” This is required by California’s “open meetings” laws, but as one MU official emphatically pointed out, such a setting does not encourage uninhibited exchange and discussion of information and ideas among technical staff. The official suggested—and the Jury concurs—that the 5-year meetings should be preceded by informal meetings of technical staff from the Bureau, SBCWA, and the Member Units. Those preliminary meetings of technical staff could give the decision-makers a better understanding of the problems to be addressed at their 5-year meetings, along with the most technically-sound options for resolving those problems.
• OB13
  More explicit use of quantitative methods. Formal quantitative methods can help clarify the reasons for disagreements. Quantitative methods are mathematical strategies for comparing management options, based on probabilities of future outcomes that can be given a numerical preference score. For example, an option might be a formula for deciding how much water to divert to MUs in each year for five years. The option's outcome depends on the rainfall pattern of the next five years, each possible pattern has a probability, and the outcome it produces could be scored based on the supplies diverted to the MUs and the quantity remaining in the Lake. In practice, there may be only a few management options, but many possible rainfall patterns, and outcomes might depend on the availability of alternative sources of water. Possible rainfall patterns 2018-2019 Santa Barbara County Grand Jury 11 and their probabilities might be estimated from past experience but might need to allow for climate change. Scoring would depend on trade-offs, such as between MU supplies and Cachuma reserves or between reliability and total quantity in MU supplies (e.g., is five years of 2,000 AF better than three years of 4000 AF and two years of zero?). These problems exist but are not insurmountable. The point of using this quantitative approach is not to micromanage engineers, but to clarify why their recommendations differ. It could be the rainfall patterns they believe most probable or their scores for outcomes. Knowing where the differences exist can make negotiation and compromise easier. Several sources suggested parts of this formal approach. One was the option of a sliding-scale formula based on the volume of water in Cachuma. Another was to display outcomes by plots showing quantities diverted and quantities remaining over time. Several MU interviewees called for such yield curves, as did the Board of Supervisors and SBCWA in their responses to the 2016- 2017 Grand Jury. A proposed scoring criterion was to keep enough water in Cachuma for the "dead pool" (a generally agreed essential minimum of 12,000 AF), downstream users and the fish, after allowing for evaporation and leaks. Outcomes missing this goal would get very low scores. Other Issues Some interviewees strongly suggested that the next Contract should be a new Contract rather than a renewal. Some issues such as terminology, the roles of SBCWA and the MUs, and their meetings with the Bureau, are mentioned above. Another is the need to address the challenge of rapid climate change. Droughts, storms, fires, and sea level rise can all affect water supply. A stress on flexibility and frequent review or adaptation is critically important. The Jury felt that the choice of words matters: a renewal suggests minor changes, but a new Contract implies the addition of new Articles and close scrutiny of existing ones. There are two other issues the Jury decided to report without recommendations. One is the allocation of losses due to evaporation. For example, if Cachuma loses ten percent of its volume to evaporation, should every use category (fish, MUs, etc.) be reduced by ten percent, or should some categories (dead pool, downstream users, fish) be exempt? In the latter case, to compensate for the exemptions, the other categories must be reduced by more. One of these categories is carryover water, left in Cachuma by a MU which did not take its full share at an earlier release. Reducing this category discourages conservation by creating a "use it or lose it" situation. The second issue is the fish releases. For example, the Winter 2019 issue of "ID No.1 News" says it must "budget hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for fish studies, fish monitoring programs, habitat enhancements (oak tree restoration projects), and other related environmental programs, for less than 10 steelhead." A counter-argument is that this low count proves the steelhead are truly endangered. 2018-2019 Santa Barbara County Grand Jury 12 FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Finding 1 The current Contract does not fully address future water management problems such as will arise from climate and other rapid environmental changes.

Agency Responses 6

Government agencies' official responses to this report's findings and recommendations. Click on a response to see the structured breakdown.

No Responses Found 3

Government entities assigned to respond to this report. No response documents have been linked in our database.