CMWD claims water shortage
By Jesse Phelps

In a three-to-one vote, the Casitas Municipal Water District board of directors declared a water shortage emergency at its weekly meeting last week,and adopted a resolution to delay accepting connections to potential new customers. The restrictions on water service applications went into effect immediately.

The board also instructed district staff to report annually on water supply and demand in apparent hopes of lifting the moratorium as soon as possible.

"Our goal is to lift this moratorium and find new water," said board President Charles Bennett. Options for finding that new water supply include conservation, buying back allocated water, desalination or connection to the State Water Project.

Directors Bennett, James Coultas and James Word voted yes, Peter Kaiser voted no and Bill Hicks, unable to attend the meeting, abstained.

Casitas has continually expressed concern about the amount of water that the National Marine Fisheries Service is requiring it to release for the fish passage operation. Though it maintains the water requirements will exceed its safe yield, the district has no choice but to comply with the law, provide water for the fish passage operation and try to develop other water sources.

"In the same way that customers of a bank must balance their own checkbooks, Casitas must balance its long-term water account," said John J. Johnson, general manager of the district.

Director Coultas and Russ Baggerly of the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County addressed the current situation of the river, the future of the fish passage and the potential effects of the water shortage emergency on local residents.

Coultas explained that Casitas called the Water Shortage Emergency because "prior to the biological opinion (NMFS's mandate that Casitas begin construction on the fish passage), Casitas had more water available for customers than we had demand, by about 800 acre/feet. Now, with the demands to bypass water for fish, we have less water available than total demand on the system. To add more customers and increase the demand makes the problem worse. It's unfair to our existing customers until we can cut demand through conservation or find new sources, or both."

Baggerly feels that Casitas is stretching the definition of an emergency.

"According to the law," he said, "emergency is defined as a 'sudden, unexpected occurence involving clear and immenent danger demanding immediate action to prevent or mitigate loss of, or damage to, life, health, property, or essential public services.' These might include fire, flood, earthquake, geologic movements as well as riots, accidents, or sabotage.

"It doesn't fit the definition of 'emergency,'" he said.

Baggerly contends that Casitas hasn't parceled out as much of its water as it tries to show in its figures. "The allocated water is paper water; the actual demand on the lake is much much less," he said.
The two had very different responses when asked whether the water shortage emergency have been called if the fish passage wasn't an issue.

"Had more demand come on the system at some point in time, we probably would have called it anyway," said Coultas. "That might have been many years in the future."

Baggerly called the emergency declaratrion simply the latest extension of Casitas' public relations efforts to garner sympathy within the community. "The hiring of the public relations firm and all the effort Casitas has put into the PR campaign is directed solely at blaming the federal regulatory agencies for following the letter of the law, unneccassarily," he said.

He argued that Casitas "started looking for additions to the water demand for the fish ladder," inflating numbers based on elements such as "evaporation and leaks and essentialy anything else they could throw into the mix to raise the water demand number." He finished by claiming, "It's unsupportable by scientific evidence."
Coultas said that no matter whose numbers you choose to believe, the fact is that nobody can say for sure what the future conditions will be. "Both of us were operating on estimates and weather patterns and other things that effect how it works. We feel we have to be conservative," he said.

One place the two found a bit of agreement was on the issue of whether Casitas has done everything possible to conserve water until now. "I'm not sure you ever have done everything that you can," Coultas said.

Baggerly cited Casitas' own urban water mangement plan of 1989, saying, "I believe there are 14 separate areas that could be implemented for water conservation and Casitas has implemeted four or five. We live in a desert and water conservation should be considered normal and not extraordinary. The 20 years that they've had the opportunity to do water conservation, they've only actually given lip service to it.

Coultas said, one way or another, the board is now committed to doing everything it can to conserve and find new avenues for water acquisition. "The board has hired a new full-time position, which is the water conservation specialist," he said. "He'll coordinate all water conservation estimates and he's going to take over a lot of the PR work. We'll be interviewing people for this job very soon." Coultas also lauded valley agricultural users for their continued conservation measures. "The biggest place that we might save water is agriculture but our farmers are unbelievably effective now, so I'm not sure if we can save more there," he said.

Baggerly summed up by saying, "I find it unfortunate that Casitas has chosen a path of obfuscation and fear-mongering because of the need to supply water for an endangered species. The water that's going to be secured for the fish is not just for the fish. There are many water-right holders below the Robles Diversion who rely on groundwater. That would include the Meiners Oaks Water District, the Ventura Water District and the City of Ventura, all of whom will find more water in the river than they normally would."

Coultas said the water shortage emergency declaration will create "consequences both negative and positive." He cited the fact that development would be slowed as a potential positive, the continuing drops in local school enrollment as a negative. No matter what, he said, every action has its consequences, including the construction of the fish passage. "To ignore that, that's ostrich-like," said Coultas. "You're putting your head in the sand."

When a water company agrees to provide water, he said, it is locked into that agreement for 40 years. "The worst crime a water company can make is to sell water they don't have," he said. "That's highly improper."

© 2003 The Ojai Valley News

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