Sanford seated as Rainbow's new CWA representative

Dennis Sanford was seated as the Rainbow Municipal Water District representative on the San Diego County Water Authority board March 28.

Sanford succeeds Gerald Walson, who passed away in February. Sanford’s term expires on February 14, 2015, although he can be reappointed for another six-year term.

“It’s an honor and a privilege that the Rainbow Municipal Water District board of directors has confidence enough in me,” Sanford said.

The March 28 SDCWA meeting was Sanford’s first CWA board meeting.

“I’m amazed as the amount of responsibility that the Water Authority has as it relates to Southern California,” he said. “It’s a great responsibility and one that’s pretty complex.”

The CWA itself obtains 29 percent of its supply from local sources. Purchases from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California account for 44 percent of the CWA’s supply while another 27 percent is obtained from Imperial County but is transported through the MWD aqueduct system and MWD imposes a wheeling charge upon the CWA for that water.

“The Water Authority is ultimately beholden to the Metropolitan Water District,” Sanford said. “The end user, the ratepayer, bears the brunt of it.”

The user also bears the burden of fixed costs, which are diluted with additional water use. “If people use less water that means the fixed cost portion of their rates has to go up,” Sanford said.

“We try to encourage people to conserve water and at the same time try to keep rates low, but at the same time it’s pure economics,” Sanford said. “It’s a very delicate balance.”

Sanford was assigned to the CWA’s Water Planning Committee and its Legislative, Conservation, and Outreach Committee.

“There’s so much going on,” he said. “I’m so new and it’s hard to really expound on what’s going on.”

Sanford joined the Rainbow Municipal Water District board in early 2011 after Paul Georgantas resigned due to employment-based relocation. Ironically, Sanford also replaced Georgantas as the Rainbow Community Planning Group chair in January 2011. Sanford was appointed to the Rainbow Community Planning Group board in February 2010.

Sanford moved from San Juan Capistrano to Rainbow five years ago after a bed and breakfast stay convinced Sanford and his wife to purchase property in Rainbow. They now live on Via Ladera Road in Rainbow Heights. Sanford operates a financial services business and also has a home sales business. He served on homeowners’ associations and neighborhood groups both in Orange County and in Denver, where he lived before moving to California in 1984, and when he was in Denver Sanford also served on an advisory committee for fire and building code issues. Sanford was raised on a dairy farm in upstate New York. Sanford and his wife have four sons who are now grown and were raised in Colorado and Orange County.

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