At its April 11 meeting, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to send a project proposal to the governor’s Drought Task Force, seeking state funding for a list of projects intended to both create new water supplies for the county and protect existing resources.
“With the cycle of drought more prevalent, and with the impacts of climate change, we need to recognize that we need to have more alternatives to pull us through dry periods,” Santa Barbara County Emergency Management Director Robert Lewin said at the meeting.
The proposed projects intending to add new water supplies include water reuse in Goleta and Carpinteria, reacquiring state water supplies suspended in 1981, and recommissioning and expanding the regional desalination facility in Santa Barbara. To conserve existing water resources, the proposed projects include groundwater treatment facilities, a temporary emergency pumping system at Lake Cachuma, and an “intertie project” between water agencies in Goleta and Santa Barbara.
Local water agencies are in complete support of the proposed projects, according to Lewin. He added that the severity of the current drought demonstrates the county’s need for proactive water projects to reduce reliance on state water. The proposed projects intend to sustain the county, not promote growth, he said.
“We were on the knife’s edge this year in that if the state water had failed, we would have been in a water crisis that would have required severe sorts of emergency responses,” Lewin said.
Such responses might have included water rationing and potentially the requirement of non-water hygiene methods, he said.
“That could have happened had we had a failure,” Lewin said. “We have a little bit of relief now with the recent rains, but we’re still in a moderate drought, and we still have issues.
“We want to have as much of a portfolio of water sources as we can, to be able to withstand emergencies,” he added.
Supervisor Das Williams, who represents the 1st District, expressed apprehension about what water agencies might do with the reacquired suspended state water. Still, the board unanimously approved the resolution, with 4th District Supervisor Peter Adam declaring, “I like my 20-minute showers.”
The project proposal will go to the governor’s Drought Task Force as well as to Sen. Hanna-Beth Jackson, Assemblymembers Monique Limón and Jordan Cunningham, and the California Office of Emergency Services.
This article appears in Apr 13-20, 2017.
