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Water Agencies Tiptoe onto Dry Land

Two bills inching through the state legislature as ESTUARY goes to press script two different roles for water districts in land use planning. One bill reinforces their historical, can-do, reactive role in which developers and city planners simply ask for water service and get it - SB1250 would force the East Bay Municipal Utilitys District to supply 11,000 new homes in the Dougherty Valley with water (water EBMUD isn't sure it has). The other bill writes a more proactive role for districts statewide - AB2673 would require cities and counties considering new development outside a district's service area to consult with water suppliers first.

Whichever the bill, the debate they've spawned reveals that no matter how much water districts fear and resist getting involved in land use planning, they already are. In the heyday of California dam building, "will-serve" were two words water districts had little trouble saying. But these days, as districts struggle with perpetual drought, increasing competition for Delta water from farmers and endangered species, and worries about supplying existing customers, let alone new ones, they'd like to be able to say at least "maybe" to that developer at the door.

Though AB2673 doesn't give water suppliers veto power over development, it does help them give priority to existing customers and discipline urban needs for water. "Sooner or later the state's going to have to deal with this," says EBMUD's Andy Cohen. "Even if AB2673 doesn't pass this year, it's now a live issue that won't go away."

The rising demand and plummeting supply sides of the water equation aren't the only things driving water agencies into land use planning and management. Consulting environmental analyst Scott McCreary says the health threat to drinking water from urban and agricultural runoff is offering a new and more acceptable avenue for water districts to venture onto dry land. "Water districts are under a lot of pressure from the feds and the state to really protect water supplies at the source, not just to rely on end-of-the-pipe treatment," says McCreary. Kathy Russick from the Santa Clara Valley Water District agrees. "Everyone can relate to clean drinking water," she says.

To protect the quality of their water supplies, both EBMUD and Santa Clara, as well as San Francisco, are making or carrying out plans for improving "watershed management." Such plans might consider everything from minimizing impacts from existing land uses - keeping cows out of streams and motor oil out of storm drains - to preventing impacts from changing land uses as roads, homes and city limits creep into riparian zones, open space and watersheds. "We're not a land use agency, but inevitably this will start touching upon land use," says Russick.

Santa Clara recently launched a comprehensive evaluation of the relationship between its nine reservoirs and watersheds in the hopes of minimizing land use impacts on their water supplies. Though many local governments could be expected to resist such water agency meddling in land use issues, Russick says Santa Clara's county planners and supervisors are responding positively. "They know land use will have to start considering environment and water quality one of these days," says Russick. "They see where the regulations are going."

Indeed, Bay-Delta cities and counties are now required to prepare stormwater management plans under recent amendments to the Clean Water Act, and state water quality agencies have been charged with making sure they do so. Amendments to the Coastal Zone Management Act are also forcing state water agencies to extend protection for coastal waters into surrounding uplands and to update California's nonpoint source pollution control plan. The State Water Board is, like the water districts, approaching the task through watershed management.

State officials are quick to say that they won't be dictating land use and that the real responsibility for watershed management lies with those who've always had the most land use control: landowners and homeowners, local communities and municipal government. "It's not the state's business to be in everyone's backyard, to have an army of bureaucrats shaking fingers at dirty creeks," says the Water Board's Sid Taylor. "It's our job to provide leadership, grants and technical guidance, and to go after the bad actors."

All and all, from local water districts on up to state regulatory agencies, McCreary thinks that "for the first time, we're seeing real linkage between water quality, supply and land use." Even federal water interests are getting into the land use act. McCreary, for example, was hired by the S.F. Estuary Project to develop priorities for protection efforts among the 12-county Bay-Delta region's 34 watersheds and receiving waters. McCreary did a resource-based risk assessment that identified, for example, the North Delta as the most threatened by increasing runoff due to urban growth.

McCreary's findings could make the environmental basis for land use controls more scientific. "Before this, the approach was just to set arbitrary urban limit lines," says Kassandra Fletcher of the Building Industry Association. "Now any type of proposed lines could be based on real resource risks. We could have value-based land use management."

The Estuary Project, in its Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan for the Bay and Delta, lays out actions for going much further into land use issues than environmental risk assessment. The Project is now working to get watershed protection folded into General Plans - the cornerstone of every city and county's vision for land use and development.

"There's an enormous regulatory burden in development decisionmaking, but we still don't have effective environmental controls," says EPA's Sam Ziegler, formerly of the S.F. Estuary Project. The S.F. Regional Board's Tom Mumley thinks sound watershed planning could also help streamline environmental reviews and "mitigate for development impacts up front."

And so water districts and agencies, like it or not, are in the land use loop. As Mumley says, with a deep breath, "We're on new territory."

Contact: Assemblyman Don Cortese (AB2673) (916) 445-8243; Sen. Dan Boatwright (SB1250) (916)445-6083; Scott McCreary (510)649- 8008; Frank Maitski (Santa Clara) (408)927-0710; Sid Taylor (916)657-0432

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