The city of Santa Maria is unloading 4,000 acre-feet of its State Water Project allotment to South Coast water agencies this year.
“We can do this because basically our city has two sources of water: local groundwater and imported state water,” city spokesperson Mark van de Kamp told the Sun.
Santa Maria is looking at a “surplus” of water, van de Kamp said, and thought it would lend a hand to the cities of Santa Barbara and Montecito—both had to borrow water from other state water contractors to make it through the worst parts of the recent drought. The South County cities are purchasing 2,000 acre-feet each from Santa Maria at $225 per acre-foot in order to repay their water debt to the Antelope Valley East Kern Water Agency.
All three Santa Barbara County cities are members of the Central Coast Water Authority (CCWA), and therefore can buy and sell state water to one another, according to CCWA Executive Director Ray Stokes. The CCWA owns and operates a water treatment plant and pipeline that delivers water from the State Water Project to its eight member agencies on the Central Coast.
“We can move water between all of our member agencies; it’s really easy to do,” Stokes said.
But during the drought, when Lake Cachuma Reservoir dropped to a fraction of its capacity and State Water Project allocations were 5 percent in 2014 and 20 percent in 2015, the South Coast was hurting for water. The cities of Goleta, Montecito, Santa Barbara, and Carpinteria were on the hunt for water, and Stokes said he had to find some of it outside of the CCWA.
“They requested additional water supplies, so I went out and found additional water supplies from other state water contractors,” Stokes said. “It basically saved the South Coast. Without that additional water, it would have been a whole different situation.”
However, there’s a provision that state water contractors can’t outright sell that water—so, those South Coast cities essentially went into water debt with state water contractors like the Antelope Valley East Kern Water Agency.
The city of Santa Barbara is not only paying Santa Maria $450,000 for the state water. According to a June 20 Santa Barbara City Council drought update, the city will also pay the cost of transporting that water to Antelope Valley East Kern, which is estimated at $500,000. Santa Barbara borrowed 6,200 acre-feet of water from the agency, and would still owe 4,200 acre-feet of water.
The Santa Maria City Council approved the sale at its June 20 City Council meeting, the same day Santa Barbara’s council approved the purchase. It’s not the first time Santa Maria has sold water to South County water agencies. In 2016, the city sold 3,000 acre-foot of water to the cities of Goleta and Montecito at a cost of $600 per acre-feet, generating $1.8 million for the city. Van de Kamp said since water availability has increased since 2016—the state filled 60 percent of its allocations that year and is promising to fill 85 percent this year—the cost per acre-foot has decreased significantly. This year’s sales will bring in about $900,000 for Santa Maria; the money will help the city’s public utilities department with the cost of water conservation—city residents are saving on water and their utility bills.
“The revenue for Santa Maria will help us offset the decreased water sales,” van de Kamp said.
This article appears in Jun 29 – Jul 6, 2017.
