By Don A. Wright
Good water management is key to both agricultural and urban water supplies. The urban water districts of Southern California have more in common with the San Joaquin Valley ag irrigation districts than they do with the urban water providers serving portions of the Bay Area, Sacramento and the Delta.
Like the Valley, much of the Southern California urban supplies must pass through the Delta from Northern California.
Like the Valley, Southern California’s urban groundwater also depends on surface supplies. And like the Valley there is pressure from Sacramento, the Bay Area, NGOs; all the challenges we face in the Valley, they face in Southern California.
Of course there are many differences as well. Southern California is dealing with changing Colorado River supplies and its tax base is far, far larger. Half the people in the state live in or south of Los Angeles County. And they consume much of the water that is delivered to the San Joaquin Valley in the form of food. A lot of mutual interests overlap in keeping the family feed sack full of safe, affordable California grown groceries.
UWI Conference
I was invited to attend the Urban Water Institute’s 2025 annual conference held in San Diego from August 20th through the 22nd. The location was Paradise Point Resort on an island in Mission Bay. More about that later in this report.
Unless I miss counted UWI is a fairly inclusive group with 57 directors on its board. Not bad for an organization with 99 members. If you’re from the San Joaquin Valley you most likely know at least some of the names and entities participating in UWI. State Water Project contractor Semitropic Water Storage District in Kern County as well as Santa Clara Valley Water District in San Jose, a contractor with both the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project are both UWI members. The secretary of the UWI board is Friant Water Authority CEO Jason Phillips.
The conference agenda had opening and closing keynote speakers and seven panel discussions. I thought the program was about as ideal as it could be. None of the presentations lasted more than an hour and 50 minutes. There was amble breaktime between presentations to inspect the plumbing or speak with the presenters or grab a snack. And there weren’t any side shows going on down the hall forcing you to choose between topics and speakers.
Day One
Things kicked off on Wednesday afternoon, August 20th with a welcome and Native American tribal blessing from Raymond J. Welch, Tribal Chairman, Barona Band of Mission Indians. Welch gave a brief history of his tribe’s dealings with both riparian and groundwater rights issues.
The first keynote was given by Josh Cook, former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region Nine, which covers California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and the United State’s Pacific Islands. It’s very unfortunate that Cook resigned from the EPA shortly
after this speaking engagement. He had some inspiring words and I hope someone else from the federal government can take up the vital cause he espoused. Getting more of the available water to farmers.
Cook referred to the amorphous “they” as in, “They will take your water.” He shared a story about when he stayed in Sicily. One morning there was no water in the village. He asked why and was told it was election day. The mayor’s brother owned the water company and turned it off to remind people not only to vote but who to vote for. Whether – Mafioso, dictator, socialist or “smartest person in the room regulator drunk on power (a far too common and very embarrassing thing to see) – They go for your food and water.
Cook said local government can be the best form and due to the necessity of a proliferate number of water related special districts it will be difficult and time consuming for Sacramento and DC to take total control.
A novel idea was presented when Cook said the EPA is here to help. He rattled off a list including nitrates, arsenic, PFAs and old infrastructure that often contained lead. If I understood correctly Cook said Pac Bell ran some phone cables across Lake Tahoe in the 1920s that had lead. There’s a legacy of nasty things from World War II in the South Pacific that falls under EPA’s responsibilities. There are also cyber-attacks against water providers that somehow or other the EPA gets involved in.
Cook advocated California’s water supply entities innovate. He has experience working with tribes and pointed out the California’s tribes are exempt from the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act compliance. Their supplies are wholly owned by the tribes and they are treated as a separate state.
Groundwater recharge is a dominant issue for Southern California and the Valley. He said he hopes recharge fares better than the California government’s $60 billion greenhouse gas reduction efforts that have done nothing. He said the part out loud about the state bemoaning climate change while ignoring policy change that could make a positive difference right now. He said the policy actions taking place are killing jobs, harming the environment and driving business out of state citing Tucson Arizona getting a water-
intensive chip manufacturing facility. I believe the point was well received. Arizona has better water and climate policy than California. So much better than even a dry, desert state can provide a better cost effective, secure water policy than California.
Next Cook talked about a matter dear to most of the Valley, President Trump’s executive orders on water. “We take it seriously,” said Cook. He said the EPA will help to implement substantive, durable and permanent fix to problems that have been languishing.
He gave as an example clean up in the Tijuana River on the California/Mexico border. He said President Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum have worked out agreements to get moving on this matter. He said California Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot and Director of Department of Water Resources Karla Nemeth are people you can work with.
During questions Cook said the research that set the Total Maximum Daily Loads for PFAs came in a little early and needs further work. He felt the Sites Reservoir project is doing good and the Delta Conveyance Project has some “wobbly wheels.”
Cook is concerned about the Voluntary Agreements. State Water Resources Control Board Chair Joaquin Esquivel and the other members have to resist staff recommendations or they’re going to blow up the whole thing up and destroy further cooperation. The EPA has some influence on FERC licenses even if periphery. This might come in handy when fighting against policies that will fallow an estimated one million acres of farmland in California. Cook said we can’t wait until the crisis point of fallowed farmland dust causing an even greater human health crisis. He and many other people don’t see the California Air Resources Board as a balanced and diverse bunch of men and women seeking out reality based solutions.
After his address Cook told me we all need a change of attitude to take advantage of the state’s water supply. He said we have enough water but we don’t have the leadership in place to get the water where it needs to be. His final statement was to believe, “We can win.”
Day Two Part One
On the second day the first panel was Risk & Resolve: How Water Conflicts Can Find Peace Through Collaboration. Two case studies were presented and the whole shooting match was moderated by Carol Lee Brady, Vice President, Rancho California Water District.
The first portion dealt with a Joint Powers Agreement amongst several districts located between Santa Ana and Carlsbad along the coastline. Frank Ury – Director Santa Margarita Water District, Brian Probolsky – Vice President, Moulton Niguel Water District and Joe Muller – Director, South Coast Water District spoke about how a very broken relationship between the JPA members was healed.
There was a great deal of mistrust and that had to be mended. One of the issues, as Ury said was the JPA was going on 200,000 miles without an oil change. The size of the JPA, formed for water treatment, had gone from 10 members to seven and was now a mixture of uphill/inland and beach front. Probolsky and Muller, and I believe Ury had all held elected offices as either mayors or city councilmen and knew there was a political game wherein credit is taken and blame passed on.
The solution was to hold more meetings of the elected officials and not just staff. To talk, to find out where the differences were and to start working on what was immediately solvable. As that progressed cooperation was increased and now things are at the level where they are all happy to talk about it at a conference of their peers.
The second case study came from closer to home. J. Scott Peterson, Director of Water Policy at the San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority spoke about the Delta Mendota Subbasin’s efforts to coordinate what may be, if not the most then surely one of the most complicated Subbasins formed under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, usually referred to as SGMA, (sig-ma.)
The subbasin is made up of 23 Groundwater Sustainability Agencies, (GSAs) parts of five counties and along its 100-mile length it abuts nine other subbasins. It is a mixture of agricultural lands, wetlands and wildlife areas and small cities. It has 308,000 acre feet (a/f) of sustainable yield groundwater and imports 1.5 million a/f of surface water. There are several areas where the groundwater quality is too poor for farming, let alone domestic use. The Delta Mendota Subbasin is also subject to overdraft during drought which causes subsidence. Water management professionals knew something had to be done.
Petersen said SGMA forced all the participants to collaborate. Since many of the member agencies are also members of the SLDMWA there was some familiarity and a history of working together. Not that it was easy. There are at least five committees working together on a variety of concerns, often governance. One way they have succeeded is to be flexible to improvements. Petersen said it takes a lot of time and energy, and the JPA has been amended several times. However, this collaboration has so far successfully kept the subbasin from the tender mercies of State Water Board probation.
There are many more wonderful and fascinating tales from the UWI conference, but you’ll have to wait to find out about them. Don’t fret, it won’t be a long wait. In the meantime, go be good to yourselves and each other.
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