2005 Award Winners — California Water Policy 15

Los Angeles & San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council — Los Angeles Basin Water Augmentation Study

The Los Angeles Basin Water Augmentation Study is a long-term research project led by the Los Angeles & San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, to explore the potential for reducing surface water pollution and increasing local water supplies by increasing infiltration of urban storm water runoff. The study addresses a number of questions intended to better characterize the benefits of storm water capture for infiltration, including impacts on groundwater quality and assessing appropriate and most favorable geographic, geologic and hydrologic conditions of infiltration. The overall goals of the study will be to evaluate the costs and benefits of implementation, and determine the most effective strategy for developing this potentially significant source of water for southern California.

The project began in 2000 and is currently funded through 2006. The focus of the early phases of the study that were just completed, was to monitor the fate and transport of runoff-borne pollutants by measuring storm water quality at the surface, and as it infiltrates through the soil to groundwater. Six locations utilizing infiltration structures, with varying land use and site conditions, were monitored for two to four years.

The third phase of the study will incorporate demonstration projects on a neighborhood scale, to show how existing infrastructure can be retrofitted to address storm water infiltration as well as water conservation, pollution reduction and treatment, flooding, and habitat and stream restoration.

Two aspects of this project are particularly noteworthy. First, the Watershed Council has forged a long-term partnership between local water supply, stormwater and public works agencies, the LA Regional Board, the California Department of Water Resources and the US Bureau of Reclamation. Second, the program is designed to provide the scientifically-defensible data need to determine whether stormwater infiltration can provide the benefits with which it is often credited – specifically, reducing the amount of runoff-borne pollutants that degrade our rivers and ocean, restoring some of the natural hydrologic function lost to urbanization, and supplementing groundwater supplies – without adverse effects on soil and groundwater.

Joe Berg, MWD of Orange County and Dick Diamond, Irvine Ranch Water District

Orange County California is a semi-arid region with limited local water resources to meet the needs of a thriving population and economy. In fact, more than half of the County’s water demand is satisfied from the Colorado River and Northern California, making efficient water resource management a critical issue. While regional water agencies have done an outstanding job educating residents on indoor water use efficiency, outdoor water conservation has yet to be targeted as a resource management strategy. Beginning in 2001, Joe Berg with the MWD of Orange County and Dick Diamond with the Irvine Ranch Water District combined their energy to address the lack of outdoor water conservation efforts in their region.

The first step was a landmark study of weather-based evapotranspiration (ET) irrigation controllers that quantified outdoor water demand and the corresponding urban runoff in a residential setting. The results of this study encouraged Joe and Dick to embark on a new project, entitled the Residential Runoff Reduction (R3) Study. The R3 Study is the first endeavor to quantify the effectiveness of public education alone versus a technology-based plus education approach to reducing residential irrigation water usage.

The results of the initial 18-month R3 Study are illuminating. Comparing control group households, education only households and retrofit group households, water conservation savings from the typical participant in the retrofit group was approximately 10% of total household water use. In addition to water savings, the retrofit group also had a 50% direct reduction in water runoff during the dry season. While the education only households also experienced some reduction in runoff, the control group households actually showed an increase of 70% in water runoff.

As a direct result of the findings of the R3 Study, a large-scale implementation program – the SmarTimer Rebate Program – is currently being rolled out. This new program will provide rebates to residential and commercial customers for replacing “dumb” irrigation controllers with state-of-the-art weather based controllers.

Joe and Dick were tireless in their efforts to push these programs through and are commended for their achievements.

Center on Race Poverty & the Environment, The Rural Poverty Water Project

The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPE), is a non-profit environment justice organization whose mission is to empower individuals, strengthen community power with decision-makers, and to address the environmental problems affecting the community. CRPE has been assisting communities in California’s Central Valley with water issues for the last 16 years.

In September 2004, CRPE formalized and concentrated its work on water with the creation of The Rural Water Project with support from Equal Justice Works. The Rural Poverty Water Project seeks to enable poor, rural communities in California’s Central Valley to secure safe and affordable drinking water.

In the first 11 months of the project, 217 community members participated in at least one of 15 trainings and workshops. These workshops have covered issues ranging from how to find out what is in your water, to water board roles and responsibilities, to understanding the General Plan and its implications for the water in your community. Workshops were held in the Central Valley communities of Alpaugh, Cutler, Ducor, East Orosi and Tonyville.

The Project has also provided direct legal services to the small Tulare County community of Tooleville that has enabled the water system to receive $10,000 from the County in Emergency Funding, and to be eligible for millions more in pending State and Federal applications. Without this help, the small community of 250 residents would not have had water in their homes this summer.

The Project also represented the Monterey Park Tract Community Services District, the water provider for about 130 low-income residents in Stanislaus County, in an appeal to the USDA for funding eligibility under the Emergency Community Water Assistance Grant Program.

The Rural Poverty Water Project is building a bridge between decision-makers and water consumers that otherwise would not exist. Communities that were disenfranchised from water policy are gaining the skills they need to become an important voice in water issues in their communities.

Santa Clara County Water Resources Protection Collaborative

The water community has focused great energy in recent years on the connection between land use decisions and water supply availability and reliability. SB 610 and SB 221 have changed how jurisdictions address issues related to growth and imposed requirements with the intent to improve the knowledge base and support better decision-making regarding development. Today, there is no question that land use decisions, and review of those decisions when challenged in court, are being seen through the lens of water supply.

While the water supply/land use nexus is being addressed to some degree, another important impact of land use decisions on water management is on storm water (both quantity and quality), flood management, and riparian corridor protection. Poor land use decisions can exacerbate problems associated with protecting creeks, streams and rivers. From erosion, to runoff, to constraining flood control options, land use decisions can dramatically impinge on the ability to protect, maintain, and potentially enhance riparian corridors and the resources within them. This is a pervasive weakness in most watershed management efforts.

To address this deficiency, under the leadership of the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the 15 cities in Santa Clara County and the County came together to work toward a unified vision of what should be done. After two years of work, the result is agreement on very detailed “Standards and Guidelines” for any land use decision related to activities abutting creeks. With only minor differences, every planning and permitting department in the County will have the same binder of “Standards and Guidelines” as its “bible” for activities or proposals that previously would have only triggered the Water District’s permit process.

The interests and values the Water District has long championed in its mission as a watershed steward have now been formally adopted by all the cities and the County. In addition, there has been a commitment to utilize the collaboratively developed “Standards and Guidelines”, through ordinances where required, in every jurisdiction. Finally, the cities will have the choice to undertake enforcement on their own or ask the Water District to be the enforcing agent for them. Ultimately, not only will there be consistency with respect to these issues that permit applicants desire, but more importantly, water resources and riparian corridors will be better protected. Breaking through the constraints of multi-jurisdictional interests to reach a unified vision, particularly in the arena of land use regulation, is an accomplishment worth emulating and so we honor the Santa Clara County Water Resources Protection Collaborative.

East Bay Municipal Utility District and Foster Farms

East Bay Municipal Utility District and Foster Farms have established a public-private partnership that has yielded significant environmental and economic benefits. The partnership objective is to provide a safe, effective, reliable and sustainable method for treating poultry by-products from Foster Farms at EBMUD’s waste treatment facilities.

The environmental benefits of the partnership include a new source of clean burning fuel (methane) for power generation, and an improved treatment of this waste stream by taking advantage of the high level of treatment at EBMUD’s wastewater facility. The partnership nets an annual energy savings of 24 million kW-hr, which is enough energy to meet the power needs of 4,000 households. Economic benefits include helping stabilize EBMUD’s wastewater customer rates through additional power production while providing Foster Farms with price stability through a mutually beneficial long-term agreement. EBMUD also has benefited economically by generating more on-site power and minimizing power purchases, thus minimizing customer rate increases as well as demand on the State’s power grid.

This partnership is unique in that no other poultry producer beneficially reuses its by-products through cooperation with a municipality to generate energy. The results of this partnership have “rewritten” wastewater industry standards in terms of digestion process parameters, and have demonstrated a new and valuable application of municipal anaerobic digestion to manage a non-traditional waste stream.

Carla Bard Advocacy Award

Betsy Reifsnider

The Carla Bard award is given each year at the POWER conference to honor the spirit and passion of the late Carla Bard. For those of you who don't remember Carla, she was Chair of the State Water Resources Control Board after serving on her local Regional Water Quality Board. Living in Ventura County, she raised four children and then dove into environmental issues, especially water. Brilliant and flamboyant, Carla forced the State to take on the tough issues of Kesterson and water waste. She was on our conference planning committee for many years and was driving to an environmental board meeting when she died in a car crash.

Carla would have been thrilled to know that Betsy Reifsnider is this year’s recipient of the Carla Bard award. Outwardly the styles of these two women could not be more different; with Betsy being more of a “LL Bean” gal and less inclined to wear the high drama caftans and shawls that Carla adored. But inwardly, these two women are cut from the same cloth – passionate and committed, eloquent and witty, and above all successful in reshaping the State’s water policies.

Thanks to Betsy’s gifted leadership, the City of Los Angeles converted its water rate structure in 1991 into a water conserving rate structure. Today, the city is using the same amount of water as it did fifteen years ago, despite adding over 1 million people to its service area. Thanks to Betsy and her work with the Mono Lake Committee, Mono Lake is now protected. When Betsy moved to Northern California in 1993, she helped the Bureau of Reclamation to develop its water conservation program. She then rejoined the environmental community in 1996 as the Executive Director of Friends of the River, and in 1999 as Convener of the California Urban Water Conservation Council, again leading the development of conservation policies that have profoundly reshaped how water is used in the State.

In the last two years, Betsy has taken her personal commitment to environmental issues and social justice to a new level, as she works with the Catholic Diocese on an Environmental Justice Project throughout the six counties of the Catholic Diocese of Stockton. This work focuses on educating and engaging people in their home parishes from all walks of life to the environmental challenges facing the region, and inviting them to help create a Plan of Action to promote Environmental Justice. She has gathered together volunteers from various walks of life – organic farmers and pesticide salesmen, Delta water activists and city water agency staff, environmental professionals, union organizers, and business owners – in a true spirit of environmental advocacy of which Carla Bard would have been justifiably proud.