State legislators have long seen an urgent need to provide adequate water supply information to planners. It was obvious to everyone that increased population in California would escalate pressure on the state's water resources.
So about seven years ago the state passed landmark legislation - the "show me the water" laws - requiring thorough disclosure of water supplies in the form of water supply assessments for all large development projects. They also updated requirements for disclosure in urban water management plans.
Even so, it took many years of insisting by local environmental groups that polluted water not be counted to force disclosure by local water agencies.
Groups demanded that treatment facilities to clean wells polluted with perchlorate should be actually functioning before additional development was approved based on those water supplies.
If a drought occurred, would water supplies be sufficient? Such a situation might force water agencies to serve blended polluted water to bring down the pollution levels in order to provide the Santa Clarita Valley with water.
It seemed like a logical precaution, but the water agencies didn't buy it. It took public-interest litigation by the Sierra Club and others to force them to disclose this in their urban water management plans.
Now the perfect storm is at hand. Thousands of new houses and a drought in California are stressing local supplies.
In spite of Castaic Lake Water Agency's September news conference proclaiming the start-up of the water treatment facilities, those facilities are still not functioning.
Last October, the water agency sent a carefully worded letter to Los Angeles County regarding water supplies for the substantially increased population proposed in One Valley, One Vision, and admitting the agency may indeed have a problem.
The water agency has asked the county to await the release of a state water reliability report before proceeding further with the One Valley, One Vision plan.
Valencia Water Co. routinely submits water supply assessments claiming there is an adequate water supply for the thousands of units proposed by its parent company, the Newhall Land and Farming Co. The Tejon-Castaic Water District, the board members of which are the same as those of Tejon Ranch, according to its Web site, provided similar water supply assessments for its huge developments, claiming adequate supplies in spite of obvious statewide water supply problems.
Why are water agencies so reticent to disclose water supply problems? In the case of Valencia Water Co. and Tejon-Castaic, the answer is obvious.
The very developers on whose projects they are reporting own both these water companies. A statement that in any way casts doubt on the adequacy of a project's water supply could kill a project, or at least hamper the development company's ability to get outside financing.
Would any general manager of a water company in that position want to risk his job by submitting an adverse report?
Whatever the reason, our planners and decision-makers are still not getting the best information about our water supplies. If our community is to avoid severe water cutbacks, such information is even more imperative now than ever before.
As the water agencies begin their urban water management planning process, we have a few suggestions.
First, water agencies that are wholly owned by the developer should not be allowed to provide a water supply assessment for that developer's projects. This situation creates an obvious conflict of interest that likely will result in the public and planners being deprived of an accurate water supply analysis.
Agencies should not be allowed to hire consultants to work on their plans when those consultants are also working for the major developers who have much to benefit or lose if those plans don't go their way.
This situation is already occurring in both the General Plan Update (One Valley, One Vision) and CLWA's proposed consultants for its 2010 urban water management plan.
At the very least, consultants should be required to disclose any such conflicts.
There is much we can do to address how our finite water supplies will be distributed in the face of a growing population.
But we cannot address these problems by pretending they do not exist. Our public agencies must truthfully and accurately disclose the real state of our water supplies.
Lynne Plambeck is president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment (SCOPE) and a Santa Clarita resident. Her column reflects her own views and not necessarily those of The Signal. "Environmentally Speaking" appears Thursdays in The Signal and rotates among local environmentalists.
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January 14, 2010 - 11:10 AM
This entire letter presupposes collusion and conspiracy, of which there's absolutely no supportive evidence. Pure speculation and innuendo.
I don't find that in the least persuasive.
January 14, 2010 - 12:26 PM
Wow! Talk about getting it wrong! Why would existing rate-payers want to pay for developing water supplies for new development? This may be the same answer to why Ms. Plambeck has no credibility in the political or environmetnal world. Listen to her words carefully... "Groups demanded that treatment facilities to clean wells polluted with perchlorate should be actually functioning before additional development was approved based on those water supplies."
...Sounds almost reasonable on its face, but let's examine the implications of what she is saying.
Following her logic, if a new development comes in and it is found that there is water that could be cleaned up or purified in order for it to go ahead that development should not be approved until the water agency has built and is operating the treatment facilities.
Hmmmm. So the developer doesn't have a project... and the agency is cleaning up the water... Who is paying for it? Where is the water being used in the interim if it's new water for a new development? Gee wiz these are good questions. Logical. Pretty simple. Hmmm. You would think someone with a heartbeat could understand this.
Instead water agencies plan to make investments if and when new development takes place. They put in place fees that pass on the cost of developing new water supplies to new development. And, they place the burden for paying for the new water supplies on new development. That makes sense - and by the way - it's the law.
As to Valencia water company being a private water company... we should all be so fortunate to be in a district who's existence is predicated on service to it's ratepayers and making a profit for it's owner under the watchful and draconian eye of the Public Utilities Commission. Oh, so they are regulated? Amazing that escaped Ms. Plambeck's characterization.
In terms of water supply planning, there are numerous laws on the books at this point that already deal with the issues she is writing about. Water agencies already have to analyze the effects of drought, reduced deliveries from the State Water Project, the effects of any pollution or any other factor that could reasonably be seen to affect their supply over a 20-year horizon. In fact, agencies have already stepped up and are analyzing the potential effects of global warming. So what is all of this about?
Perhaps this gets my blood boiling for an entirely different reason. I already knew what Ms. Plambeck would write after I saw her title. The reason is that she has been agitating these same issues for years in this valley to such a degree that people like me don't want to hear her poison anymore. It's the same rehashed garbage that she has been sprewing for 15 years that I have been in this valley.
Please consider removing her from this column. My subsciption lapses next month.
January 14, 2010 - 02:19 PM
Well said, Kris.
Like you, I knew what tack Plambeck was going to take before reading the article, simply based on her history as a NIMBY.
She's a member of that class that goes into paroxysms any time a shovel shows up anywhere.
She's got hers; nobody else should get to live out here.
January 15, 2010 - 02:14 AM
Let's reduce Lynne Plambeck's column to a practical discussion. Use the American Beauty Classic Homeowners Association as an example.
That HOA has more than 500 detached houses. However, because the County and the original developer didn't want badly maintained landscaping, all of the houses front lawns are landscaped and maintained by the homeowners association. All have grass, lush bushes, and the homeowners association gardeners use a lot of water each week, hooked up to each home owner's meter, to keep the landscaping green.
In addition the homeowners association has huge swaths of green common area lawns surrounded by bushes and trees.
All of this landscaping is watered by "old style sprinklers" not water conserving drip irrigation.
What will happen when Castaic Lake Water Agency exercises its power to order water rationing, so that Santa Clarita's existing water supply can be spread out among old and new developments? What will happen when Santa Clarita Water Company wildly jacks up its water rates, to force people like American Beauty Classic's Homeowners Association to use far less water, so it can be redistributed to new developments?
The answer is very clear. Each homeowner is going to be stuck paying $10,000 to $20,000 so that his front lawn, bushes and trees, and his share of the common area landscaping can have all of its watering systems re-plumbed to drip irrigation, so that the lawns and beautiful bushes can be ripped out and replaced with "drought tolerant plants".
Everyone is who has to bear this expense, either through their homeowners associations levying special assessments, or directly pay these costs to relandscape their own property, is going to be screaming bloody murder at their landscaping being destroyed and their bank accounts being destroyed, all so that new developments in Santa Clarita Water Company's territory can have water.
Those of us who keep track of these things have been complaining since 1996 that Castaic Lake Water Agency was "maneuvering to steal Canyon Country's water" so that home building could continue in Valencia and Newhall Ranch.
Now it's coming true, but voters throughout Santa Clarita have been too self absorbed or too stupid to pay attention to this water theft. Perhaps now they will start paying attention when they discover they will be paying $10,000 to $20,000 per house to re-landscape their own properties as well as their homeowners association's landscaped area.
January 15, 2010 - 02:29 AM
Brian Baker and Kris Crow's comments show either of two things: Naivete or disengenuousness.
They fail to mention four key facts.
Santa Clarita's ground water supply, from wells, has dramatically dropped in the last 10 years, because more than 5 high production water wells have been shut down because of pollution with perchlorate, TCE and PCE coming out of the Bermite property. That has meant less well water. The plume of contamination is spreading to the northwest of Bermite, contaminating even more ground water wells which belong to Valencia Water Company. Bottom line, there is far less clean ground water available today than there was 10 years ago.
Second, because of the drought, Santa Clarita's uncontaminated ground water wells have been producing less and less ground water. We went through that during the last drought cycle where the wells at the east side of town virtually dried up. There is no telling when we will have another wet cycle where the ground water supply will increase.
Third, about half of Santa Clarita's drinking water comes down the pipeline from the Sacramento Delta in a pipeline called the State Water Project. Over the last 10 years as the drought has increased state wide, the State Water Project has dramatically decreased the quantity of water delivered to Santa Clarita, even though Santa Clarita's population has dramatically risen.
Fourth, because of the Federal Endangered Species Act, a Federal judge in Sacramento has ordered even further dramatic cut backs to water shipped southward by the State Water Project.
The bottom line is that Brian Baker and Kris Crow just don't get it. It's not a conspiracy. It's simple math. Santa Clarita has been getting more and more people, and less water.
Local residents are at the point where they are going to be paying huge sums of money for their water, and huge sums of water to relandscape. Those costs, which few people want to bear, are only made worse by adding to the Santa Clarita Valley's population.
January 15, 2010 - 10:34 AM
Sorry, CoastalSage, no sale.
First of all, as even you say, there's no evidence of any "conspiracy", yet Plambeck's letter is chock-full of conspiracy theories. It reads like something out of Oliver Stone.
Second, and far more importantly, your entire thesis is predicated on the idea that the current situation is frozen in stone. It's not.
Historically, the entire city of LA couldn't even exist if not for the efforts of Mulholland et al to bring water south, as the LA area is a naturally arid zone.
As our valley continues to develop, the same thing can easily happen, once the ridiculous political obstacles are removed.
It's people like Plambeck who create those very obstacles, then turn around and try to block further development by pointing at those same obstacles. Talk about bootstrapping!
January 15, 2010 - 05:46 PM
To Brian Baker:
Good for you.
You and Newhall Land pay to buy more water from God knows where for new residents.
You and Newhall Land pay to build the facilities to bring that new water into the Santa Clarita Valley.
You and Newhall Land pay for new equipment to clean up the contaminated water flowing out of Bermite, since your moron friends on the Board of Directors of the Castaic Lake Water Agency signed a full general release of claims against Whittaker Bermite and its insurance companies, on the advice of Nossaman LLP a self-proclaimed expert national law firm, which is the law firm for (1) the water agencies, (2)Newhall Land and (3) another perchlorate polluter called Aerojet. [Bet you didn't know about that grotesque conflict of interest which should get the Nossaman lawyers disbarred or thrown in jail.]
We here in Canyon Country are not going to pay higher water rates, or to rip out our landscaping, just so Newhall Land and the other developers in the Santa Clarita Valley can build even more houses.
So go ahead Brian, get out your check book.
January 15, 2010 - 07:13 PM
No, Coastal, though I note you immediately lapse into the usual and cliched liberal outrage the moment your game is named for what it is.
Instead, I'll simply wait for the market forces to assert their natural influence. When prices start going up and become unsustainable by normal REASONABLE people, all those political barriers I named will crumble.
This is the same thing we saw with the constantly spiraling government expenditures in this state -- enacted by liberals -- that have finally now become unsustainable because the people of this state have decided they've been taxed to the limit. So all those liberal programs are finally being cut to the bone, and then some.
Same deal will happen to other nonsense like the Endangered Species Act, etc. There's only so much sympathy people have for frogs and fishes, and that pretty much ends when people have to sacrifice too much.
Now, me... I happen to like frogs and fishes. Usually with a nice garlic and butter sauce.
January 21, 2010 - 06:48 PM
So following Coastal's logic what are those poor people in Santa Clarita going to do when they have to install water efficient landscaping? And why is it that Coastal (I mean Plambeck) thinks that existing users are going to be targeted? To make room for new development? Of course.... Or is it?
Let's be a bit pragmatic. I realize that this may be hard for you, but give it a chance. If we stopped all new development would we still have the problem with the groundwater being poluted by a government contractor? Yes. And would the State Water Project deliveries still be lower due to the Delta Smelt and the drought conditions? Yes. So we would need new water supplies in any event? Yes. (Ok now, follow along kids...)
I see, so it is the direct responsibility of all of these NIMBY's and so-called Environmentalists who keep suing and getting Judge Wanger to reduce deliveries to Southern California who ought to be asked the question. Where is the water going to come from to replace the supplies you are taking from Santa Clarita?
Lynn, this is for you. Where is it going to come from and who is supposed to pay for it?
If the State and Federal governments had any sense they would value human life as much as the life of animals and plants. Then we could at least have a fair playing field for these discussions. Instead we get these nuts trying to stop new development, which last time I check, is happening because of all of us having babies, positive net-imigration, and longer lifespans. Gee, I am sorry Ms. Plambeck, but if you put your money where your mouth is you would have sterilized yourself before childbearing and ended your life early to make room for someone else.
As for me and my family, I plan on out living all of you and responsibly using natural resources. I have already and will continue to install water efficient landscaping and fixtures. I will base my decisions on facts not hyperbole and hysteria, and I will own up to the fact and pay my share of the costs for providing water and energy to my home and family in light of the fact that natural resources cost more than we had planned for in the past.
It's really that simple. To do anything else is to conveniently avoid our heritage and our future all at once. To devoid our minds of facts and paint a picture that serves our self centered purpose, which in Lynn Plambeck's case is simply to destroy Newhall Land. But what about the growth in Canyon Country, or Antelope Valley?
Isn't the real issue how we face up to our common challenges?
As far as water and energy is concerned we are going to have to pay more for them. It is really that simply, the question is, are we going to allow the environmetnalists set the agenda, or are we?
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