CWA begins urban water management plan

uthority has begun its 2005 urban water management plan.

A January 27 presentation to the CWA’s Water Planning Committee started the process, and on February 1 the CWA hosted a workshop held by the California Urban Water Conservation Council and the state Department of Water Resources to discuss new and existing requirements associated with the development of the urban water management plan.

The CWA expects to distribute the draft 2005 plan to member agencies for review in July and to distribute the final draft to the CWA’s board of directors in September. The September CWA board meeting would also include a public hearing, and the CWA board is expected to adopt the plan at its October board meeting and submit the adopted plan to the Department of Water Resources in November.

The January 27 board meeting also included the award of a consultant contract to McGuire Environmental Consultants, Inc., to prepare a drought management plan which will identify actions to avoid cutbacks and establish a methodology to allocate supplies if cutbacks are required.

The California Water Code requires that all urban water suppliers within the state prepare and update an urban water management plan every five years. An urban water supplier is defined as an agency which provides water for municipal purposes to more than 3,000 customers or supplies more than 3,000 acre feet of water annually, so in addition to the CWA all of its member agencies except the City of Del Mar and the Yuima Municipal Water District must update and adopt an urban water management plan in 2005. The plan must contain a detailed evaluation of the supplies necessary to meet demands over at least a 20-year period both in normal and dry years.

Several significant changes have occurred since the CWA’s last adoption of an urban water management plan. Two new state laws now link large land use development approval to water supply availability, and the urban water management plan is used as a basis to document that supply availability. In September 2004 the state’s Fifth District Court of Appeal invalidated the Castaic Lake Water Agency’s plan as legally inadequate due to the failure to address timing issues related to perchlorate contamination in that area’s local groundwater basin. A 2004 state law sponsored by the CWA now requires urban water management plans to describe opportunities to develop desalinated water.

The CWA is in the process of developing an updated water demand forecast which will incorporate the San Diego Association of Governments’ 2030 regional growth forecast. The CWA will also coordinate with member agencies to determine projected yields from local supplies and savings from conservation programs. The 2005 plan will identify various resources including recycled water, groundwater, surface water, conservation savings, water transfers, seawater desalination, and both preferential right and potentially non-firm Metropolitan Water District supplies.

The drought management plan will be part of the urban water management plan. The CWA currently does not have a formal plan which outlines the actions needed to avoid or minimize cutbacks to member agencies for firm supplies during drought conditions (customers utilizing the agricultural rate can be cut back up to 30 percent before any metropolitan and industrial cutbacks are implemented). The CWA’s Operations and Maintenance Department is developing a treated water shortage allocation plan which will focus on issues due to facility constraints, and the McGuire Environmental Consultants plan will focus on issues associated with supply cutbacks.

The drought management plan process will be initiated in February. A member agency technical advisory committee will be formed to allow input from member agencies in the plan’s development while the consulting firm will facilitate meetings, assist CWA staff in identifying key issues, formulate the allocation methodology, and prepare the drought management plan report.

The drought management plan report is scheduled to be submitted to the CWA board for approval in July 2005, after which it will be incorporated into the urban water management plan.