Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Legacies of the Monterey Agreement Watering Newhall Ranch on a wish and a prayer By Lynne A. Plambeck
Southern California has a water problem. Government and court decisions the past several years make clear that it is time to re-examine how we view water and our water resources:
• Courts forcing Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to leave 15 percent of its water diversion in the Owens Valley to wet down alkali dust in Owens Lake bed and reduce particulate air pollution;
• Setting aside approval in June 2000 of the 21,000-unit Newhall Ranch project in Los Angeles County, the largest development project approved in California, for lack of an identified water source;
• A Record of Decision in the six-year CalFED public dialogue now facing several lawsuits, making the outcome of CalFED’s labors uncertain, despite its protests of good faith and equitable statewide water solutions;
• A court decision in Amador County in 1999 underlining the need to address water in local general plans1;
• A Public Utilities Commission decision requiring environmental review for Valencia Water Company’s water management plan before further service area annexations are allowed2; and
• A Sacramento appellate court setting aside the Monterey Agreement environmental impact report (EIR) as inadequate (particularly its project description, the Agreement itself).
Southern California’s water problem is not just a problem of supply. It is also a problem of concept.
Signs of Change
The Sacramento appellate court made this abundantly clear last September when it opined that “paper water [referring to undeliverable portions of state water project entitlements] always was an illusion...‘Entitlements’ is a misnomer, for contractors surely cannot be entitled to water nature refuses to provide or the body politic refuses to harvest, store and deliver. Paper water represents the unfulfilled dreams of those who, steeped in the water culture of the 1960s, created the expectation that 4.23 maf [million acre-feet] of water could be delivered by the SWP built to capacity.”3 Now it cannot.
Are land use planners listening to the recent legal and policy decisions and to public outcry to change things? Some are. Although the City of Los Angeles has grown greatly in population, water usage has remained almost steady. LADWP deserves praise and credit for its great strides in water conservation, a result of its efforts with community groups to ensure that real conservation goals are achieved.
Even the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, that dinosaur of planning whose staff seems to glory in concrete, has begun a shift of thought, possibly attributable to its membership on local watershed councils. Commuity groups find its staff more open to solutions that will provide both flood control and remain natural waterways such as occurred in the Arroyo Seco and on a smaller scale in the Laing Homes development in the Santa Clarita Valley.
Local and Logical Planning
In the late 1970s, litigation gave Los Angeles (LA) County a specific water planning tool called the Development Monitoring System (DMS). DMS provides LA County a means of analyzing infrastructure needs in light of previous approvals and existing uses. If the DMS finds that fire services, schools, roads, libraries, and water services are inadequate, then a new development project must be downsized, delayed or denied until such public services and utilities exist to serve the development.4 Although the decision was 10 years in the making, it forever changed LA County’s planning process.
Of course, the reasoning within the DMS seems perfectly logical to most everyone. Just ask the man on the street “should you build housing tracts without a water supply?” The response is inevitably a look of disbelief and an emphatic, “No!, of course not.”
For many years land use planners, on the advice of water agencies often controlled by developers, lived by the mantra that “water supply is infinite, it is only a matter of how much you are willing to pay for it; “water runs uphill to money”; and, “build the houses and the water will come,” etc. More recently, many general plans and many local, state, and federal laws require an analysis of water supply for new developments and protection of local aquifers, rivers, tributaries and groundwater recharge areas.
In spite of such local (and logical) planning mandates, agencies from the Army Corps of Engineers to city planning departments allow important LA County watershed resources to be converted to concrete channels, maximizing developer profits at the expense of current and future community needs.
Huge development projects, with Newhall Ranch in the lead, were approved in LA County with little or no attention to the adequacy of the water supply needed for new residents or to the impact potentially massive reductions in existing available water supply that would result to local businesses and established communities.
Fundamental changes in viewpoint are yet to arrive. Southern California will need to rely more heavily on our local water resources than ever before, for example through conjunctive use and living within our means. Have we taken this message to heart? The Newhall Ranch Project is an example of how far Southern California has come, but how far it must go to bring development plans into line with water realities.
Newhall Ranch
Newhall Ranch is a 21,600-unit project proposed for an agricultural area along the Santa Clara River, LA County’s last wild and unchannelized river in northwestern LA County, in a watershed spanning two coastal counties (including Ventura County), bounded on the south by the Santa Susana Mountains. The project is not located within any City boundary and is in an area previously zoned by the LA County general plan for only 2,000 units. In one swoop, the County increased its population projections by 70,000 people for the area and re-zoned the agricultural land to allow the project’s urban uses.
Under developer pressure, the County refused to address Newhall Ranch’s water or watershed issues in any meaningful way.
For example, a regional planning commissioner stated at a 1996 hearing that the developer, Newhall Land and Farming Company’s proposed placement of 3,000 new homes in a floodplain of the Santa Clara River obviously created most of the opposition. River habitat, water, flooding and viewshed concerns could all be resolved by merely removing these homes and the proposed commercial uses from this area.
There was silence in the room. Reduce a developer’s proposal by 3,000 units?
Such a proposition was unheard-of in LA County, though it was eminently logical, probably required by the general plan, and would protect the River and its water supply.
The Commission seemed to support the idea though, and the public held its breath.
But County planning staff returned a month later with the proposal reduced to 300 units, and no loss of commercial zoning. The Commissioner who had previously suggested 3,000 unit reduction, lauded this token change as an excellent compromise.
We all speculated that in the interim she apparently received a stern lecture on the need for developer campaign contributions.
One Commissioner bravely continued pushing for flood plain protection. He was replaced before he could vote on the project.5
LA County approved this massive project in March 1999 knowing that Newhall Ranch had no adequate water supply and it ignored the General Plan’s mandate to protect the Significant Ecological Area (SEA) status of the Santa Clara River.
Still, a condition was attached to the County’s use permit approval stating that tract maps would not be approved unless and until a sufficient source of water was found for each tract. This condition had the effect of delaying the examination of adequate water supplies to the tract map stage of the approval process. It also locked out the possibility for local watershed protection that would aid water supply by locking in inappropriate land uses granted with approval of the Newhall Ranch specific plan.
Shell Game vs. Common Sense
The Newhall Ranch approval was in part the fault of the area’s over-zealous growth-oriented water agencies. Controlled by development interests, these agencies have consistently overstated water supply by reporting access to full State Water entitlement and relying on extensive overdraft of local sources.6
Instead of reporting existing planned and available water supplies, the local water districts’ state-required Urban Water Management Plan lists aquifers that are currently unusable due to ammonium perchlorate pollution. In addition, the County’s water plan relies on water bank availability for which they have no contracts. And it overstates State Water Project entitlement availability.7
Water information supplied for the Newhall Ranch EIR claimed availability of full state water entitlement, giving the appearance of a large surplus of available water supply. This was exactly the problem anticipated in the Monterey Agreement EIR court decision, where Santa Barbara citizens merely put forward “the common sense notion,” wrote the court, “that land use decisions are appropriately predicated in some large part on assumptions about available water supply. There is certainly the possibility that local decision makers are seduced by contractual entitlements and approve projects dependent on water worth little more than a wish and a prayer.”8
Further the Newhall Ranch Court was asked to take judicial notice of a 41,000-acre-foot Monterey Agreement transfer that was consummated just days after the approval of the Newhall Ranch project.
The plaintiffs (of which I am a member) had no way of arguing to the court the myriad infrastructure problems associated with the acquisition of this transfer, the biggest of which is storage. Castaic Lake Water Agency has no storage facility, no spreading grounds, no means of accumulating water locally to supply users in the event of a multi-year drought. And yet this state water transfer would be the primary, not the “supplemental” water source for thousands of homes and businesses. With only a “pass-through” 4,000 acre-feet of storage in Castaic Lake, and a “flex” agreement that allows only a modest increase in that amount that must be repaid in a five-year period, there is no way of assuring water to residents in a multi-year drought event.
We also had no means of bringing to light the shell game that Newhall Land and the water agencies were foisting on the public. This same Monterey Agreement water transfer was promised to three different projects before three different agencies.
Castaic Lake Water Agency first presented data indicating that the transfer was needed for existing general plan land use approvals.9
Then, Newhall Land and their subsidiary, Valencia Water Company, obtained permission from the California Public Utilities Commission to annex the Westridge project to their water service territory based on this transfer.10
Finally, LA County Supervisor Antonovich clearly based his approval of the Newhall Ranch project in part upon this transfer.11
Even the Santa Clarita area water agencies’ recently released Urban Water Management Plan lists aquifers that are currently unusable due to ammonium perchlorate pollution, water bank availability for which they have no contracts and over-stated State Water Project entitlement availability, instead of reporting existing planned and available water supplies.12
How can local planners and commissioners be expected to make good planning decisions with such inaccurate and vague water information? It is time to put some teeth in the urban water management law that requires more accurate reporting if this tool is ever to be really useful to the communities and planning agencies it is supposed to serve.
Wishing and Praying
During the approval process for the Newhall Ranch project, Newhall Land and Farming argued that the houses would be built over a 25-year period and that by then they would find water.
But most proponents of good watershed management believe that destroying Northern fisheries to feed sprawl in Southern California is no longer an acceptable option. The 27 few years ago to get clear and plain analysis of water issues into the planning process. No, the water agencies shouldn’t be in control of planning (who would want such a headache?), but they must provide planning agencies with accurate information and planning agencies, for the benefit of their communities must act on this information.
We must also strengthen California’s urban water management planning law. At the moment, water agencies are determined to support the development industry to the detriment of existing communities and local businesses.
They may mislead local planning agencies that depend on information presented in Urban Water Management Plans, freely and without fear of repercussion.
There must be some means to ensure accuracy of reported water supplies and verifiable methods of balancing demand with real supplies. Some public or agency oversight is needed to discourage overstating of State Water Project supplies, require clear disclosure of polluted basin water supplies, and timelines and financing mechanisms for bringing on capital projects needed to support any future supplies.
Southern California politics, particularly in the Santa Clarita Valley, is still controlled by the development industry.
With huge sums of money at stake, it is difficult to make even very reasonable public concerns such as adequate water supply a meaningful and enforceable part of the public planning process.
To continue supplying even our present population with good potable water, we must have political leaders willing to speak out and act to protect our local watersheds. This is just good common sense.
NOTES
1. County of Amador v. El Dorado County Water Agency, No. C027948, 99 C.D.O.S 9544 filed Nov. 3, 1999, certified for publication Dec. 3, 1999.
2. Application 99-12-025, filed December 17, 1999, Ruling JLN/BDP/abw 12/21/2000. Other aspects of the application are still pending.
3. Planning and Conservation League v. Department of Water Resources, Case no. C024576, Court of Appeal, 3rd District, decision filed 15 September 2000, footnote #7.
4. Coalition for Los Angeles County Planning in the Public Interest v. Board of Supervisors of the County of Los Angeles, C366464, entered April 30, 1986, Judge Norman Epstein.
5. Commissioner Richard Wulliger.
6. PCL v. DWR, op. cit., note 3, above.
7. See Table 1-4 pg. 1-19, 2000 Urban Water Management Plan prepared for Castaic Lake Water Agency, Newhall County Water District, Santa Clarita Water Company, Valencia Water Co. by SA Associates, Reiter Lowry Consultants, Black and Veitch available on the CLWA web site at www.clwa.org.
9. Castaic Lake Water Agency, Draft Integrated Water Resource Plan, February 1998, see Table 2-3, p. 2-6.
10. See California Public Utilities Commission Resolution W-4154, 5 August 1999.
11. “...The Castaic Lake Water Agency believes that it will be able to provide the needed supplies on schedule through County line. Final LA County approval stated that future tracts would not be approved if supplying them with water would result in an overdraft of the local aquifers. But how could Ventura County believe such a statement knowing that water supplies were overstated and overdraft was already occurring?13 In April 1999, shortly after the approval by LA County, 11 downstream public agencies (including 4 cities, flood control and air pollution districts), a downstream water district, three environmental organizations, and a low-income housing group filed suit in Superior Court in Ventura County. After a short skirmish over venue, the case was heard in the neutral venue of Kern County by Judge Roger D. Randle. Volumes of briefings and several days of oral testimony led to a historic decision to set aside the Newhall Ranch approval “until Newhall Land could demonstrate that adequate water sources will be available for buildout of the project.”14 The August 2000 decision suspends “all specific Project activity or activities that could result in an adverse change or alteration to the physical environment unless and until they comply with the provisions of the LA County General Plan related to the development monitoring system as it relates to water supplies and the General Plan policies of Los Angeles County requiring protection of natural resources in SEAs as they relate to [the Santa Clara River].”15 Momentous Water and Land Use Issues How can we resolve such momentous issues before they arrive at the doorstep of the courts? Local watershed councils will help a great deal in this area. Although broad-based coalitions may not reach consensus, they do provide a forum for education and understanding of the wide array of impacts brought about by poor watershed conservation. We need to strengthen Senator Costa’s SB 901 effort of a future acquisitions.” Motion to approve the Newhall Ranch Project, LA County Board of Supervisors, 28 February 1999, and more specifically in correspondence to Karen Pearson dated 11 February 1999: “Finally, with respect to the issue of water, the Castaic Lake Water Agency has advised us of its intent to acquire 41,000 acre-feet of water from outside the Valley.”
12. Castaic Lake Water Agency, Newhall County Water District, Santa Clarita Water Company, and Valencia Water Company, 2000 Urban Water Management Plan, prepared by SA Associates, Reiter Lowry Consultants, and Black and Veitch, 2000, Table 1-4, p. 1-19.
13. See comments and testimony by Ventura County and United Water Conservation District, Newhall Ranch Final Environmental Impact Report, 1999.
14. Kern County Case # 239324-RDR consolidated. Judgment entered August 3, 2000, p. 35.
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