A New Agency for a Growing Region: The Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency
The Santa Clarita Valley.
T
he Santa Clarita Valley, north of Los Angeles, has grown in population by 41percent in the last 15 years, and its current population of 250,000 is expected to reach nearly half a million in the foreseeable future. To serve this growing population and deal with problems such as drought and natural disasters, the two major water providers in the valley, Newhall County Water District and Castaic Lake Water Agency, decided to move forward with a consolidation that resulted, in 2018, in the Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency (SCVWA). In this interview, SCVWA General Manager Matt Stone speaks with Kris Polly, editor-in-chief of Municipal Water Leader, about the ambitious and successful plan to create a unified water district for the Santa Clarita Valley. Kris Polly: Would you please tell our readers about your background and the SCVWA?
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MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER
PHOTO BY JEFF TURNER.
Matt Stone: The Santa Clarita Valley sits about 30 miles north of Los Angeles at an elevation of about 1,300 feet. We are in the first of the series of mountain valleys and passes that separate Los Angeles and Southern California from the Central Valley of California. We get our name from the Santa Clara River, which runs through the valley and out to sea near Ventura. The population is around 250,000, and we have approximately 72,000 retail service water connections in our area. Resourcewise, there is a significant groundwater basin below parts of the valley. Significant growth started in the mid-1960s with Newhall
Land and Farming Company. We’ve experienced a 41 percent increase in population over the last 15 years. The area has a projected future population of a little over 480,000. As far as my background, I started working in California water in 1984. My education includes an undergraduate civil engineering degree, a master’s degree in environmental engineering, and another one in public administration. I worked with the private sector for the first 10 years of my career as a consultant, focusing on water resources planning, preliminary design, and feasibility studies. I had a pretty diverse client base, with over 200 different assignments over that time period. Later, I became interested in water policy, so I moved to the Municipal Water District of Orange County, a publicsector regional water wholesaler, and stayed there for the next 14 years. We were the third-largest member of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and a big part of my duties included support for our appointed directors on that organization’s board, which familiarized me with a great number of interesting regional policy issues related to the management of the Colorado River and the Bay Delta, water-rate structure and design, water efficiency, legislative and public affairs, and integrated resource planning. I was also involved in a significant consolidation between the two water wholesalers in the county. That turned out to be good experience. After that, I went out to the Inland Empire and managed Rancho California Water District, a retail water
