The Vanguard has spent quite a bit of time sitting down with city staff and water consultants to understand this complex water project and the stakes.
One of the myths that we thought we had de-bunked already is that the city would lose its water rights should it not go forward with the water project.
Ken Landau, the Deputy Executive Officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, is often cited for providing the statement that the city could lose its water rights.
He said, “The State of California doesn’t have enough water to go around, and by law if a community is not diligently pursuing use of its water rights, the State Water Board can take those back.”
But the key word here is “can.”
Mr. Landau acknowledged, “That’s something that doesn’t happen very often, and certainly for communities where it’s recognized that, in most cases you get a water right for growth over the next several decades, so it wouldn’t make sense to take the water right back if you don’t use the water right away because you don’t have a need for it yet, but you need it for long-term growth.”
Mr. Landau did say, “If the City, this group, the cities decide ‘let’s delay this for 10 years,’ I’m not part of that decision making process, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if somebody went back to the State Board and said, ‘Excuse us, they’re not using the water. Can we have it?’ I don’t know the chances of the State Water Board actually doing that, you know, agreeing to that and taking it away. It does happen occasionally, usually under extreme circumstances. But again, looking at the risks that go along with delay, that would be one for you to think about.”
But even that statement came with the caveat that even when it does occur, it is “under extreme circumstances.”
Rich Rifkin, a columnist from the Davis Enterprise, this week confirms what we were led to believe, both by the comments of Ken Landau and from city staffers, that Davis is not in danger of losing its water rights any time soon should they not act immediately to exercise them.
As Rich Rifkin reports, he contacted the State Water Resources Control Board, Assistant Deputy Director James Kassel of the Division of Water Rights, to address his questions.
He notes that, since July 2008, there were 147 revocations, but only two were for cities – the city of Arcata in Humboldt County and the city of Plymouth in Amador County.
He writes, “In most cases of revocation, the rights holder requests that his license be revoked. The state water board complies and the rights are taken away. That is what took place in Plymouth in 2008 and in Arcata in 2009.”
“I did not find a case in the list of 147 in which a municipality held water rights, did not use them beneficially and the city’s rights were revoked,” Mr. Rifkin reports.
The Woodland-Davis Clean Water Agency filed for a water right on April 19, 1994 and received it in April 2011.
Mr. Rifkin reports that Mr. Kassel told him: “A water right permit is an authorization to develop a water diversion and use project… The state water board considered the development period requested for the Davis-Woodland project during the water right hearing on permit issuance and determined that the development period was appropriate.”
He continued: “It is not unusual for project construction to be delayed for a period of time after permit issuance because permit holders require time to obtain permits from other entities, such as an Army Corps of Engineers 404 Permit, a Department of Fish and Game Streambed Alteration Agreement, etc., prior to building their projects.”
The requirement is that construction work be completed by December 2040.
Concludes Mr. Rifkin, “Based on Kassel’s explanation, it seems unlikely to me that, if the voters of Davis reject the increase in our water rates, we would lose our share of the Woodland-Davis Clean Water Agency’s water rights in the next 25 years.”
If this were Mythbusters, I believe we would have busted this myth already.
There are certainly other matters of concern that need to be addressed. As we mentioned yesterday, the Vanguard has met with staff members for a number of hours, going over information.
Based on these conversations, we have concluded that the city believes going forward with the water supply project is in the best long-term interest of the city. However, they also acknowledge short-term considerations make this a far less than black and white conclusion, as has been publicly acknowledged.
Bottom line, in a meeting with Interim Public Works Director Bob Clarke, Finance Director Paul Navazio and Chief Consultant Jim Yost, Mr. Clarke acknowledged that the city did not have to act now and not one person at that meeting disputed him.
We now have more confirmation that the yanking of the 40-year permit is unlikely to occur.
However, the issuance of fines and increased costs of the project definitely remain concerns.
As we have mentioned, Interim Public Works Director Bob Clarke told the Vanguard that, while he believes it unlikely that the city could get a variance simply by applying for it, the one way it could work would be if the voters voted down the rate hikes.
Mr. Clarke believes that the city’s groundwater system is ultimately unsustainable, but even he cannot say whether it will fail in two years from now or in 50 years.
We believe that there will be costs associated with not going forward at this time, however, those costs have to be mitigated against the economic impact of increasing water rates starting this year, with as high as 25% to even 50% increases.
Those who believe that mentioning the school parcel tax is pitting schools against water, seem not to recognize that, in fact, there is one pot of money and people are going to have to weigh what they consider their spending priorities to be.
For those who argue that we will burden our children in the future by forestalling this project fail to recognize that we are at the low ebb of public education funding, and that putting the parcel tax in jeopardy could put our children’s future in a much greater degree of risk at a much more vulnerable time in their lives.
In the end, like all other concerns, those concerns weigh against concerns about future costs being higher, and the possibility of fines. Unfortunately, people have tried to turn this into a black and white issue, where in reality there is a lot of uncertainty and no really good and clean solution.
In the end, I understand those whose inclination it is to try to bite the bullet now, but at the same time, I think that pushing the project off could provide us with new opportunities in the future. We shall see.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
David
Can you be more specific about what “new opportunities” you might envision being provided by delay on this project ?
” …fail to recognize that we are at the low ebb of public education funding”. I certainly hope that you are correct in this assessment that this is as bad as it gets, but see no evidence yet that conditions are likely to improve dramatically in the foreseeable future. Also, it is important that we keep in mind that not everyone’s children are on the same timeline. Mine are 22 and 19 so at present my personal focus is on higher education and job opportunities while still remaining cognizant of both the immediate and the long term needs for your little one’s including your beautiful recently adopted daughter! All else aside, my congratulations at this momentous time for your family!
“We now have more confirmation that the yanking of the 40 year permit is unlikely to occur.”
Sue has been saying that on here for weeks to anyone who cared to listen.
Medwoman:
Thank you, I never knew how much joy a little one would bring and I have always loved children. And I have always fought for education because of that love and passion. But you may be right, that things are going to continue to get worse, but I don’t want to live in that world and will do everything I can to make that not be in the case.
IN terms of new opportunities, that needs to be fleshed out, but my sense is that construction costs do not rise linearly, instead what we see are new technologies emerge to better enable us to perform the same tasks and innovation therefore has to be weighed against increased construction costs.
Rusty: Sue has been saying that for a few years and appears to be accurate.
“Rusty: Sue has been saying that for a few years and appears to be accurate.”
The attacks on Sue Greenwald’s credibility, suggesting that her unnamed experts are non-existent and that she has been making up the facts to support her position, have been unrelenting. As if her past public record (Covell Village Measure X) was not enough to confirm that she has been and remains the most knowledgeable and hard-working Council member now sitting on the CC dais, Rifkin’s fact-based article confirms her credibility when she speaks on the surface water issue.
David Greenwald said . . .
[i]”We now have more confirmation that the yanking of the 40 year permit is unlikely to occur.” [/i]
David, this will be my very first comment about possible risk of losing the permit, but each time I have read Sue’s well reasoned comments on this subject, I have had a little voice in the back of my brain whisper, “Historically what Sue is saying is correct, but given the significant escalation in California’s “water wars” is the future going to simply repeat the past?”
The bottom-line on that whisper is that we all can only make educated guesses about what the future will bring as water tactics (especially by Southern California jurisdictions) escalate. We simply don’t know what will happen.
Davisite,
The attacks on Sue from posters here have been relentless.
Sue was correct about the water rights and also correct that rates were going much higher than the 14% that was advertised.
So far: Sue 2
Opponents 0
Let’s see how the rest of this plays out.
Matt: That is fair enough.
Rusty, Sue is and has been absolutely wrong on selenium. She has consistently said we are in compliance, and we are not. When the fine level exception expires in 2015 and the SWRCB starts fining us real dollars for our selenium non-compliance, we will begin feeling selenium “pain” . . . in our pocketbooks.
So far:
Sue 2
Not Sue 1
With that said, Sue has done some serious legwork on this subject for years and she deserves credit for her dedication. We all have tunnel vision every now and then, and Sue’s “miss” on selenium is pretty easy to understand given her conflation of selenium and salinity. There is the possibility of a variance policy some time in the future (no policy exists now), but no such variance is even remotely likely for selenium.
“Sue has been saying that for a few years,” is exactly correct. Bold and cap it so you guys will remember next time.
Anymore more strawmen created by the City that we need to debunk? VOTER2012, ERM, Ryan, Don, anyone? Let’s take ’em one at a time.
It’s Halloween coming up, and let’s see if city water staff or you guys can scare us a little more?
Speaking of scare tactics and Halloween, remember Helen Thompson’s “boogeyman” letter she wrote on county stationary in October 2005 to scare us if Covell Village did not pass? By far the best political ad ever run in this town was done by Bill Ritter on the eve of Halloween and published as a full page ad in the Davis Enterprise. We call it the “boogeyman” ad, complete with colors and scary figures.
(David, can you scan it and post it for us to remind us of the history of scare tactics used by the wasters of tax dollars and growth mongers? It would be a great article, and include her letter image. It’s totally current today, given the tactics being used to scare the public.)
Seriously, obviously we are going to need some debunking ads during the campaign, and hopefully Bill or someone will put them together for the campaign.
Oh, and sorry, but DT Businessman is on the list.
On the subject of my comment above about possible risk of losing the permit, that will also be my last comment on that subject. I’ve always felt that was a very minor issue when compared to others.
Matt: actually, at the tables and knocking on doors for the signatures, the risk of losing the permit was viewed by far as the biggest public concern. The “use it or lose it” bogeyman scare tactic by staff and the CC over the past year reached a lot of people. Here’s to Rich, again, for showing us the truth!
Michael Harrington said . . .
[i]”Anymore more strawmen created by the City that we need to debunk? VOTER2012, ERM, Ryan, Don, anyone? Let’s take ’em one at a time.”[/i]
ABSOLUTELY Mike, please weigh in on debunking any myth associated with selenium. The components of that myth are:
1) our out of compliance status vis-a-vis selenium
2) the impending 2015 fines from the SWRCB for our out of compliance
3) the fact that 12 of our intermediate aquifer wells currently have selenium levels that range between twice and 9-times the permit level of 4.4 µg/L.
4) the fact that those 12 wells represent 12,000 gallons per minute of water flow into our distribution system.
Michael Harrington said . . .
“Anymore more strawmen created by the City that we need to debunk? VOTER2012, ERM, Ryan, Don, anyone? Let’s take ’em one at a time.”
ABSOLUTELY Mike, please weigh in on debunking any myth associated with the fact that in order to drill any additional deep water aquifer wells the City must file an EIR, and when the last EIR was filed by the City in 2005, UC Davis filed a formal objection and forced the City to reduce its new well flow limit from 9,000 gallons per minute to 4,500 gallons per minute.
Why is that important? Simple, your preferred solution of using local groundwater has to deal with the selenium compliance issues outlined above, and if additional deep water aquifer wells are your preference, then we need 12,000 gallons per minute. UCD didn’t want 4,500, how are they going to react to 12,000?
Michael Harrington said . . .
[i]”Matt: actually, at the tables and knocking on doors for the signatures, the risk of losing the permit was viewed by far as the biggest public concern. The “use it or lose it” bogeyman scare tactic by staff and the CC over the past year reached a lot of people. Here’s to Rich, again, for showing us the truth!”
[/i]
Mike, the fact that it got temporary traction didn’t make it a significant issue in the larger scheme of things. It did make for a good sound byte though. Your whole “local control” message makes for a good sound byte too, but it is equally insignificant in the big picture.
From Rifkin’s article:
[quote]The last question I asked had to do with money. Are there any cases where a water rights holder was allowed to retain his rights for an extended period of time because building a water project was too expensive?
Kassel responded, “The Division of Water Rights is not aware of any case meeting this criterion. Per Section 844 of the board’s regulations, lack of finances [b]will not generally be accepted as good cause for delay in developing a project.”[/b]
Based on Kassel’s explanation, it seems unlikely to me that, if the voters of Davis reject the increase in our water rates, we would lose our share of the Woodland-Davis Clean Water Agency’s water rights in the next 25 years.[/quote]
I think Rich did not sufficiently address this last point that lack of finances will NOT be accepted as a good cause for delay? Apparently there is no precedence for this situation. So, how is it that ya’ll are jumping to conclusions that the risk of having our rights rescinded are gone?
“…for our selenium non-compliance, we will begin feeling selenium “pain” .
Of course, we do not really know what level of “pain” that could/would be. I seem to remember Sue Greenwald did address this issue with a plan(IF necessary) that would entail a combination of using more mid-level aquifer water for landscaping and other similar uses, to be replaced with more water drawn from the deep aquifer. I may be remembering incorrectly here and hope that Sue will clarify. This plan would not be forever but would allow us to POSTPONE and phase-in the surface water project.
“So, how is it that ya’ll are jumping to conclusions that the risk of having our rights rescinded are gone?”
The rare incidence in the past of it being revoked.
[url]”The Division of Water Rights is not aware of any case meeting this criterion.”[/url]
Davis, it has never happened before and it would not be accepted as a good cause for delay.
If our circumstances are unique, then you cannot put us in the “rare incidence” group. We would be a “unique incidence” and hence we would own risks for establishing new precedence.
Am I the only one that sees this flaw in the logic of the surface water project blockers?