The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to create two groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs)—one for the Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin and another for the fringe areas of the Santa Maria Groundwater Basin—at its May 9 meeting, with 4th District Supervisor Peter Adam recusing himself from both votes.
The Cuyama basin will partner with five other public water agencies to create its GSA, which will seat a total of 11 people on its board of directors. The Cuyama basin will be represented by five seats on the board, each with a 6.7 percent weighted vote, and the Santa Barbara County Water Agency will hold two, each with a 11.1 percent vote. The Cuyama Community Services District and counties of San Luis Obispo, Kern, and Ventura will each seat one person on the board, each with a 11.1 percent vote.
Supervisor Das Williams, who represents the 1st District, said at the meeting that while he usually wouldn’t support a “regressive” stakeholder-based voting structure, this case is an exception.
“This is a matter that could have come to the board as a titanic battle between the desires of residents to have a more progressive, one person, one vote voting structure, and landowners to have a more stakeholder-based voting structure,” Williams said. “It is a compromise between those two interests and those two needs, and I support that compromise. It was hard to get there.”
Important decisions made by the GSA will require a 75 percent weighted vote, “in the interest of maintaining a broad consensus among the agencies,” according to a board letter from Public Works Director Scott McGolpin.
Supervisor Steve Lavagnino, representing the 5th District, pointed out that the 75 percent voting hurdle would be difficult to work with, but added that he overall supported the compromise.
“One of the signs of a good compromise is not everybody’s completely happy with the situation, but everybody feels like it might have been the best thing we could have achieved,” Lavagnino said at the meeting. “I think we were successful there.”
Lavagnino also echoed a desire voiced by several public commenters to create an advisory board to the GSA, largely comprising Cuyama Valley residents who are deeply familiar with the area’s water issues.
“I will be looking to see that advisory council crop up as quickly as we can put it together,” Lavagnino said. “Sometimes, experts are mostly the people that have the local knowledge.”
The Board of Supervisors also created a GSA to represent the fringe areas of the Santa Maria Groundwater Basin in Santa Barbara County. These areas include part of the Cuyama River, a portion of the Sisquoc River, and a narrow area along the southern edge of the adjudicated basin.
“Forming a GSA would protect water users in the fringe areas from state intervention while giving the water agency time to work with the [Department of Water Resources] and the State Water Resources Control Board to determine what it means to manage these small areas, with limited water use and limited impact on the adjudicated basin,” McGolpin wrote to the board.
Supervisor Adam left the room and recused himself from both of these votes out of “an abundance of caution,” since he was unsure as to whether he or his family owned land within the boundaries of either proposed GSA area.
This article appears in May 11-18, 2017.