Mission Viejo Mayor Pro Tempore Frank Ury posted this today on his Mission Viejo Blog. Frank is on the brightest local elected officials in OC, and it's always worth paying attention to what he has to say:
Several weeks ago the Santa Margarita Water District held a Community Leaders Water Forum in Mission Viejo. Over 100 were in attendance, and listened to state and local leaders discuss statewide and regional water issues.
After listening to the Director of the California Department of Water Resources speak for 20 minutes, I experienced phases of confusion, bewilderment and finally resolute anger. The presentation, made during the throws of the recent State Bond effort of 2006, was frighteningly similar to the discussion years ago which precipitated Orange County passing Measure M for transportation improvements. The bottom line message: Orange County is on its own, but the State will come to you to bail the State out of our financial problems.
So now is the time for our County to take a new direction, one of financial independence from the State for infrastructure and long term financial obligations. The OC should control its own destiny.
You can read Frank's entire post here.
Unfortunately Frank needs to peel the onion in order to understand the entire issue of access to water. We are almost entirely dependent on imported water. As a candidate for the SMWD in 2000 I researched this issue in depth. Sadly while 2/3rds of our water falls in northern Ca, 2/3rds of our people live in southern CA. We get our water from both the State Water project in northern Ca and the Colorado River Aqueduct. That water is supplied by the OC Metropolitan Water district whose (than) president Ed Royce Sr. took several of us on an all day bus trip where we visited a filtration plant and the new $2 billion dollar Diamond Valley reservoir in Hemet/San Diego that is to hold 800,000 acre feet or 260 billion gallons of water representing a six month emergency supply.
The water in the Colorado River is a zero sum gain. Although we were able to get more than our allocation in the past, Arizona and Nevada are experiencing huge growth and no longer have excess for us to tap. That is why we are being forced to reduce our usage by 15% cutting down from 5.3 million acre feet to 4.4 acre feet per year. In addition to Arizona and Nevada, the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, along with the nation of Mexico, all get some of this same Colorado river supply.
While we focus on the need for housing and roads to meet the projected growth in O.C. population and industry, providing a steady supply of safe drinking water is off most radar screens.
Let us not overlook the agriculture industry that also takes their share of this same limited necessity.
Frank is correct in pointing out that this is an issue that needs to be addressed.
Larry Gilbert, Mission Viejo
Posted by: larry gilbert | May 01, 2006 at 11:08 PM