Saving water could save Sonoma County $1 billion
Published: Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 5:52 p.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 5:52 p.m.
The success of conservation measures undertaken by Sonoma County residents is a major reason the county Water Agency wants to pull the plug on a $1 billion water supply project.
“We have done a great job of conservation and we can get by on a (smaller) supply,” Santa Rosa Mayor Susan Gorin said.
From Windsor’s extensive recycled wastewater use to North Marin’s program to upgrade fixtures at the time of a home sale, everyone seems to be stepping up.
“Conservation and recycled water have allowed us to stretch our supplies,” said Mike Ban, Petaluma’s water resources director.
Use in summer, when irrigation is at its highest level, has declined 28 percent this year compared to 2004, surpassing the conservation goal set by the state for Sonoma County.
With that level of conservation and growth hovering at 1 percent a year, the amount of water the agency was seeking — 101,000 acre-feet, almost twice what was delivered in the past fiscal year — is not needed, said Randy Poole, the Water Agency’s general manager.
“There is a great opportunity for water savings; this is not rocket science,” Poole said. “We can meet the general plans of the cities and the county areas, we just want people to be smart about it. You don’t need a lot of water.”
The Water Agency decision, which still needs to be approved by the Board of Supervisors, caught the major customers by surprise.
“The dust is still settling on this decision,” Ban said.
“It just raises a lot of questions about what this means for our planning future,” Gorin said. “We are not even talking about five or 10 or 15 years, but from here on out.”
The Marin Municipal Water District is afraid the Water Agency will not meet Marin’s projected needs.
“All we are asking for is before the agency makes its decision that we go through an analytical process and see what is achievable,” said General Manager Paul Helliker. “The agency is changing its approach, and we have not seen any data to support it.”
The Water Agency wants to withdraw an application to the state Water Resources Control Board to increase the amount of water it takes from the Russian River to 101,000 acre-feet.
It is almost twice the 55,000 acre-feet of water delivered in the year ending June 30. The annual peak Water Agency delivery in the past has been 62,000 acre-feet.
The agency has spent $6 million on the study and environmental impact report for the application over the past decade.
Officially called the Water Project, it would have required spending almost $500 million on a pipeline to augment the capacity of Dry Creek, now the sole conduit for the water stored in Lake Sonoma. Another $500 million would have been spent on rebuilding transmission facilities to serve southern Sonoma County and Marin County.
The cost of those projects to homeowners and businesses would have been about $100 million a year, or a 200 percent rate increase, Poole said.
The Water Agency customers are the 600,000 residents in Windsor, Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Cotati, Petaluma and Sonoma and the Valley of the Moon, North Marin and Marin Municipal water districts.
The general plans for Sonoma County cities are based on the Water Agency providing 75,000 acre-feet of water, the amount that is in the present agreement between the cities and the Water Agency.
“If the water rights are kept at 75,000 acre-feet, we will get close to if not get all” of what Santa Rosa needs, said Glen Wright, the city’s deputy director of water resources. “It is still not enough to take us to 2035, but we are in the process of developing recycled water, looking at ground water and we include additional conservation in the future as a water source.”
That is also enough for the growth that Rohnert Park has projected in its 2004 water plan, which updated its 2000 general plan.
“The way our water consumption is at the moment and the way we are dealing with new development, we can implement our general plan,” said Jake Mackenzie, a Rohnert Park councilman and chairman of a Water Agency advisory committee.
Poole said, however, said he doesn’t believe even that much water will be needed to meet future growth.
“It is not about water supply, it is about water management,” Poole said. “There is not a lack of water, it is how we use it effectively.”
Helliker said the Water Agency has a separate contract with Marin Municipal to deliver 14,300 acre-feet by 2030, which Marin projects as its need, but that requires the improvement of the southern transmission system.
“The agency has contractual obligations and we want to make sure we are all moving in the same direction on those contractual obligations,” Helliker said.
The Board of Supervisors has set a Sept. 15 public hearing on the Water Agency’s request to abandon the Water Project.
It will also be discussed Monday by advisory committees that represent the Water Agency’s customers.
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