Orange County Grand Jury
• 2008-2009
• Agency Response
Response to:
South Orange County Wastewater Authority
Paper Water Does Orange County Have a Reliable Future?*
⚠️ Aviso de traducción: Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.
⚠️ 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: F3
Findings and Recommendations 3 findings
F1
There is inadequate coordination between local land-use planning agencies and local water supply agencies, resulting in a process that fails to fully engage the issues.
Related Recommendations (1)
R1
Each Orange County municipal planning agency, in cooperation with its respective water supply agency, should prepare for adoption by its city council, a dedicated Water Element to its General Plan in conjunction with a future update, not to exceed June 30, 2010. This document should include detailed implementation measures based on objective-based policies that match realistic projections of the County's future water supplies. These objectives, policies and implementation measures should address imported supply constraints, including catastrophic outages and incorporate the realistic availability and timing of "new" water sources such as desalination, contaminated groundwater reclamation and surface water recycling. (Findings F.1. F.1(a), F.1(b), F.2,
F2
California's looming water supply crisis receives very little, if any, expressed concern from the public in comparison to the numerous other environmental issues presented during development project reviews.
Related Recommendations (1)
R2
Each Orange County retail and wholesale water agency should affirm its responsibility to develop new, additional, innovative public outreach programs, beyond water conservation and rationing programs, to expose the larger issues surrounding water supply constraints facing Orange County. The objective should be to connect the public with the problem. The outreach effort should entail a water emergency exercise that simulates a complete, sudden break in imported water deliveries. The exercise Orange County Grand Jury Report "Paper Water" September 2, 2009 should be aimed directly at the public and enlist wide-spread public participation on a recurring basis beginning by June 30, 2010. This recommendation may be satisfied by a multi-agency exercise but the inability to coordinate such an event should not preclude the individual agency's responsibility. (Finding F.2, F.2(a), and F.2(b)) Response: Recommendation R-2 has been implemented by OCWD. OCWD has a very comprehensive public outreach program and is an active member of the Water Emergency Response Organization of Orange County (WEROC).
F4
Orange County is uniquely fortunate to have a vast, high-quality, well-managed groundwater basin serving its north geographical area. However, in its south reaches, it has an equally large, high-growth area with virtually no available groundwater resources.
Related Recommendations (1)
R4
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 human-caused disaster, or any other catastrophic disruption. WEROC should commence meetings of all parties, to facilitate consensus on an equitable funding/financing agreement. (Finding F.4, F.4(a) and
* 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.