Most water utilities have long maintained they are not
in the growth management business, but are simply
service agencies that supply any development permitted
by local planning and political authorities. So who is
responsible for the water/growth equation? In
California, new statutes make it clear that
developers, local governments, and water utilities
alike must share the responsibility.

California's governor signed SB 221 and SB 610 last
October, after a protracted effort sparked by a water
utility's concern over the adequacy of its supplies.

In 1990 the East Bay Municipal Utility District took
the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors to court
when the board enacted a general plan amendment to
permit 11,000 new homes and associated civic
infrastructure in growing Dougherty Valley. EBMUD had
determined its water supplies were inadequate to serve
this new growth and existing customers in times of
drought. If the growth were permitted and drought
occurred, EBMUD would have to ration water to homes
and businesses, a prospect it loathed. The utility won
the case, and worked with a state legislator to
introduce a one-sentence bill: "No development project
shall be approved unless a long-term reliable water
supply is available."

Eleven years and thousands of statutory words later,
SB 221 and SB 610 essentially enact that principle.
The two bills take two different angles to assuring
adequate water supplies. SB 221 requires a developer
of any subdivision over 500 units to obtain written
verification of availability of sufficient supplies
from the relevant water provider, as a condition for
any local government to approve a tentative
subdivision map. SB 610 requires local governments to
request of, and water providers to provide, a water
supply assessment for specified commercial development
proposals, and residential or any other projects with
a water demand greater than 500 residential units. The
specific information in the assessment, including
analysis of the adequacy of supply to meet the
proposed growth as well as existing demand in normal,
dry, and multiple dry years, must then be considered
in the California Environmental Quality Act review
process undertaken by the local government.

Each bill specifies in great detail the information
that must be included in the verification and in the
assessment. Each provides conditions that proposed
projects and contracts to increase supply must meet to
be considered adequate for local governments to
approve the development. The overall effect is that
information on the demand/supply balance must be
gathered, considered, and made part of the public
record during the land use planning and permitting
process. And water utilities are put squarely in the
middle as participants with developers and local
governments in assuring growth and water supply are
balanced. Further, SB 610 ties the assessments to
Urban Water Management Plans required of most water
providers by earlier legislation, and adds teeth by
conditioning grants and loans from the California
Department of Water Resources on the adequacy of the
plans.

To those who say water providers should not be
involved in the land use process, Randy Kanouse,
Special Assistant to the General Manager of East Bay
MUD, says, "We are participants, and we shouldn't
pretend otherwise." The utility took the position in
its court battle with Contra Costa County that further
development should not be allowed until supply
projects on the drawing board were securely in place.
Allowing development to proceed otherwise would be
irresponsible to its existing customers.

While the real results of the new legislation remain
to be seen, there is hope that the provisions will
stimulate additional water conservation and reuse.
Detailed information on both are required. Water
providers that pursue the California Urban Water
Conservation BMPs set in place in recent years through
a cooperative multi-stakeholder process are
specifically allowed to use their BMP plans to satisfy
some of the SB 610 requirements.

Asked what "turned the corner" in the decade-long
lobbying effort, Kanouse noted the impact of the
recent California energy crisis, and the low
precipitation and runoff-50% of normal-in the
2000/2001 winter. Widespread water rationing loomed
for 2002 if the 2001/2002 winter also turned out dry.
So resistance to the bills withered over 2001.
According to Kanouse, legislators realized they
"couldn't vote down a measure that had as its premise
protecting Californians from the ravages of water
demand exceeding supply."

by Richard Pinkham from Waterwise,
Newsletter of the Colorado WaterWise Council, Summer 2002.