To see the future clearly, one must first look to the past for guidance—at least that’s how Geary resident Tom Gibbons sees it.
In order to figure out how Santa Barbara County can maintain a sustainable water supply in the future, Gibbons said the county needs to study how area residents came together in the 1920s. He spoke at a Sept. 29 public meeting in Santa Maria hosted by the Santa Barbara County Water Agency, where the department asked for input on long-term water supply alternatives.
Gibbons said that residents came together in the ’20s and planned for the future, laying the groundwork for the reservoirs and dams that supply the county with its current water supply. He believes that even with the range of opinions and ideas regarding what’s right when it comes to water priorities and environmental concerns, people can coalesce and look ahead to ensure the county’s future population has the water it needs.
“In society, we need to balance these needs. … We all got to learn to work together and row the boat in the same direction,” Gibbons said during the meeting. “I’m getting to the point in my life where I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
Matt Naftaly, the county’s Water Agency manager doesn’t disagree.
“They did this decades ago, and that’s why we have what we have,” Naftaly said after the meeting. “We need to do that for the future.”
The county’s working on a long-term water supply alternatives report, which will study what the county’s options are for supplemental water sources through 2040, and, as Naftaly stressed during the meeting, not for the current drought. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors tasked the Water Agency with the study in June.
But why worry about the future, when the present water situation seems so bleak?
Well: “On the whole, there is some gap in what could be considered sustainable,” explained Persephene St. Charles, senior water resources planner with RMC Water and Environment, a company the county is contracting with to complete the study.
Simplifying the county’s water situation is difficult; there’s a lot to take into consideration—recycled water, surface water (reservoirs, lakes, streams, and rivers), imported water (i.e. state water), groundwater, and return flow or recharge back into ground and surface water supplies. Each of these sources supplies a different need and gets recharged at a different rate.
St. Charles used a colorful bar graph to illustrate her point at the meeting. The graph shows the county’s demand for water is more than the county’s water supply—meaning the county takes more out of its water supplies than is typically recharged back into the system. To explain further: The county has enough water to supply its current demand, but the trend isn’t sustainable into he future.
She explained to meeting attendees that the county was looking for ideas: basically, what water needs are and which supply options should be considered in the study.
“This is not a decision-making study. … This project is to provide a technical basis for future decision making,” St. Charles said during the meeting. “How to better cope with water shortages in the future.”
Ray Leslie from Lompoc proffered an idea outside the scope of what the county’s Water Agency is looking at. Leslie said he used to work for Bechtel, a company that designs and builds infrastructure projects all over the world. He thinks that the United States should build a national water pipeline, 30 new dams, and a series of pumps that run off solar power.
“As you notice, now, when we’re droughting, other parts of the country are flooding,” Leslie said, adding that the flooding could be alleviated through the pipeline, as could the droughts.
Laurie Tamura said she was hoping that the way different parts of the county use water is taken into account.
“Santa Maria was good, and did their thing, South Coast did not,” Tamura said.
She added that the Santa Maria Valley has already taken the responsibility to plan for the future, has paid for water supplies and pipelines, and uses water responsibly; therefore, Santa Maria shouldn’t have to pay for any future water infrastructure improvements that are directed toward supplementing South County water supplies.
St. Charles responded to Tamura, saying water efficiency was not something the study would be looking at.
“Not that it’s not important,” St. Charles added.
What the study is looking at are water supply options such as desalination plants, more imported water, increasing reservoir capacities, adding new reservoirs, leveraging dam spills as recharge for groundwater supplies, and recycled water. The Water Agency held a second public meeting on Sept. 30 in Santa Barbara, and won’t be holding any more until the draft report is out in September 2015, when it goes before the Board of Supervisors.
When supervisors asked the Water Agency to complete the long-term study, they also asked for an interim report on the county’s groundwater situation. Naftaly told the Sun that the agency is presenting the groundwater report to the board during its Oct. 14 meeting.
“A lot of the water levels in a lot of the wells often are showing a decline over the last three years, but the reason for that is unclear,” Naftaly said. “The short story is there are indications of a relationship [between the drought and groundwater levels], but it’s complicated.”
Contact Managing Editor Camillia Lanham at clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 2-9, 2014.