On the Record

Nicholas Schou is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of several books, including Orange Sunshine and Kill the Messenger. If you have tips or stories about Montecito, please email him at newseditor@montecitojournal.net

Which Way Water Security?

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Anyone carefully watching the progress of MWD’s “Water Supply Agreement” (WSA) with Santa Barbara already knows that it is almost a foregone conclusion that the agency’s board of directors will have already approved this deal by the time you’re reading these words. Yet as historic as today’s vote is, or was, there are still several important questions about Montecito’s complex relationship with water that remain to be fully answered. In this, the sixth article in the Montecito Journal’s water series, we hope to do just that.

So what exactly is water security? It sounds like a basic question, but it turns out there’s more than one answer. In water jargon, the phrase translates into making sure you have a reliable and preferably local supply of water. The problem is there really isn’t anything fitting that description in our neighborhood, at least not underground. Although certain nearby areas uphill from us, including Slippery Rock Ranch, sit on top of sizable water aquifers, they aren’t currently allowed to sell their water to anyone. So, in practical terms, water security for Montecito means purchasing water from Santa Barbara’s 1980s-era desalination plant.

Although the Funk Zone facility is licensed to provide up to 10,000 acre feet of water per year, it is currently only operating at one-third capacity. By selling desalinated water to Montecito, however, the city can help pay down the plant’s $70 million price tag and perhaps expand its production of desalinated water.

Local environmental activists oppose the deal over concerns about the plant’s impact on ocean wildlife (more on that in a minute). However, the rest of Montecito’s water board: groundwater sustainability director Cori Hayman, finance director Ken Coates, and strategic planning director Brian Goebel, all support the desal deal. So does Carolee Krieger, president of the California Water Impact Network (CWIN), who has been following the debate over Montecito’s water policy for decades and has often clashed with the board’s leadership. “I approve of the deal MWD is trying to craft with the city,” said Krieger. “I think it’s the most reliable source of water for Montecito.”

Why So Expensive?

Longtime critics of MWD’s current board, including former manager Bob Roebuck and former board member Dick Shaikewitz, see the deal as a waste of money – a lot of money. They have a point: Desalinated water is about as expensive as water gets, unless you purchase it on the spot market during a state-wide drought; for Montecito, it is estimated to start out costing $3,194 per acre foot per year, which is enough water to cover an acre of land with one foot

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of water. California is no longer in an extreme drought, however, so opponents of the deal argue that it would be far wiser for MWD to rely on water from the State Water Project (SWP), which brings water from Lake Oroville in Northern

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The argument in favor of the Oroville source is we’ve already paid for this water and assuming that Montecito can continue to conserve water, we don’t really need desal. “MWD has a significant opportunity to reduce the need for supplemental water supplies by increasing water conservation,” Roebuck argued in a recent editorial. “Presently only 15 percent of MWD water is for interior use. The remaining 85 percent is for exterior use, primarily landscaping.