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HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-13-16 PC Correspondence - Public Comment (Lucas)Lomeli, Monique Subject: RE: please forward to the Planning Commision From: Bob [ Sent: Friday, April 15, 2016 7:38 AM To: Davidson, Doug Subject: please forward to the Planning Commision RECEIvEU CITY OF SAN LUIS OBISPO APR 18 2016 COMMUNITY DLVELOPMENT Meeting:_ C' 4.1 '- Iry Item -.110 10 Lan rn Pa L As I mentioned at the Planning Commission meeting on Wednesday, I have enclosed an attachment about the City's Water Forum on April 21. It contains questions and comments about the current policies and plans about water. Please send this email and its attachment to the new board. I was pleased that Commissioner Larson said he would attend, and I encourage all other members to do so since the issue will be on the agenda of the next Planning Commission meeting. Thank you, Bob Lucas 4594344 The City Water Forum Is Coming! Thursday, April 21, 6 to 9 pm The Ludwick Center, 864 Santa Rosa Street "Hope for the best; plan for the worst." Mayor Jan Marx The City's Water Forum will be a great place to learn about SLO water and how secure its future is. Consider these issues you might ask about or learn about: Climate change is a huge unknown. Our climate is becoming more anomalous, resulting in torrential rains, higher average temperatures, and longer droughts. How will climate change impact our available water supply over the next 20 years? What provisions are being made or contemplated to counter its negative impacts? Annually, 98% of our household water comes from three reservoirs—Nacimiento, Santa Margarita, and Whale Rock. In 2011, before our drought began, our major source, Lake Nacimiento, was overflowing. A few months ago, only 17% of that water was left. Some of that has been restored, but what has happened to the water in Santa Margarita Reservoir? Why is it completely off line? EI Nino's arrival was touted as a 95 percent probability. Now it looks like we may not even reach normal rainfall this year. That would make it eight in the last 10 years in which rainfall has been below normal! How long can this go on before we're in serious problem with our water? What's next for us in conservation and/or rationing? My lawn is already dead; is my avocado tree next? What else will we have to sacrifice before a building moratorium is triggered? How do our City review commissions know how much water a new building development will take? Do developers provide this information? Where will their new water come from? Lake Nacimiento has a huge watershed and huge capacity! But Monterey County owns Nacimiento Dam and controls the water in it. Annually our City is entitled to less than 2% of its full capacity. When push comes to shove and water gets scarce, can we be sure of even that? In 1959, the City contracted for almost 5500 acre feet of water a year from Lake Nacimiento. That allotment sat unused for 52 years. Then, beginning five years ago, in just two moves, we've tapped into all 5500 acre feet of that water. Why did we not need it for 52 years, and then take it all in just 5 years? When a new housing division is approved, where does the new water come from and who pays for the cost? Do developers pay offsets for it? What are examples of future offsets they might pay? Could current residents get that money to defray the cost of things like greywater reuse systems? How will we know when our conservation efforts have been enough to erase the drought surcharge on our water bill? If we are certain of at least 3-1/2 years of water left, why is there a drought surcharge on my water bill at all? Notice: The City's documents detailing current water policies are located at www.slowater.oEq This site will give context to many questions and issues explored at the Forum. Be aware that the City will be unveiling revisions to some documents for the first time at the Forum, so some of these points will be rendered moot. SLO City invites you to register for the Forum and to ask questions in advance at http://www.siocity.0rg/Home/Components/News/News/3570/947 Do it today! 2 FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN MORE DETAILED INFORMATION, SEE SPECIFIC TOPICS BELOW Conservation and Rationing Who declares water rationing? Utilities, Mayor, City Council? How does the rationing we have undergone, 12% required by the state and the other 10% contributed voluntarily by the residential, commercial, and institutional sectors of the city, jibe with City's rationing stages? Without being required to do so, citizens have complied with almost all of the first two stages. When rationing is officially declared, will the city residents be expected to go through the first two stages again before they reach the last one? Guidance to citizens about how to react at the various stages is minimal. The first stage, a 5% reduction, calls for acts such as stopping pouring drinking water in restaurants without being asked, stopping washing driveways with a hose, and making sure that on our limited irrigation days no excess water flows into the street. Easy enough to visualize. But the documents are silent on the next two stages, when the required reduction quadruples (another 20%) for the second stage and then quintuples (another 25%) for the third stage. What are the kinds of things that will make it possible to reach these levels of reduction? On the matter of priorities for access to water (residential, commercial, landscape, new development): Are they implemented in reverse order cold turkey? That is, is the first step to stop all new development, then to stop all landscape watering, then to stop all water to commercial and institutional, and so on? Other sections in the water shortage documents seem to suggest that all will receive water, but at some to -be -subsequently -determined -percentage level. Who will be deciding the percentages appropriate to these levels? Are the priorities implemented cold turkey, or are they going to be implemented pro rata? Say 10 percent from the top down to 50 percent from the bottom (new development). When the stages for rationing are set, what is the baseline for reduction? Current wet water usage, or wet water usage from one or two years earlier? The higher the baseline, the easier the compliance, but the less water is saved and less of the future is secure. In my analysis, I used 6000 AF from a few years ago making maximum rationing level more realistic as a goal. If we use 5000 AF (current usage), the minimum level target is 2500 AF, which will be very difficult to reach for the following reasons. The Department of Health identifies 50 gpcd (gallons per capita per day) as the minimum for health and safety, a lifeline minimum. Stage I limits water to 72 gpcd, Stage II sets max at 60 3 gpcd, and Stage III is 50 gpcd (consistent with DOH guidelines). However, 50 gpcd is only 29% less than the 72 gpcd level, not 50% less, which would be 36 gpcd. Therefore, it may be legally impossible for the city to reduce the water draw by its stated goal of 50%, for residents, who comprise two thirds of the water users in the City. This could put the overall 50% reduction out of reach and unrealistic as a data point for calculating how long our current wet water supply Will IdA. Water, Development and a Building Moratorium What is the feedback loop between new development coming on line and water flow or availability? That is, what information does the Utilities Department receive about new development and its impact on water availability? Is there anything like a LEED-type water impact analysis for significant new development projects, e.g., the Avila Ranch Development? Which Commission (Architectural Review Commission or the Planning Commission) would likely now be the one to address this issue? If we are to accommodate the needs of growth, and growth is to be calculated at about 1% a year for the next twenty years, how much water would that add to the draw each year? Would it be 1% more acre feet a year, or less? If new buildings are very water efficient, how much less than the 1% a year growth per residential unit would the draw on water be? One half of the projected growth allocation of 1%? Whose has a specific responsibility to calculate and/or comment on this impact? Avila Ranch proposal would be an interesting test case. What part of new building permits goes into a segregated fund to defray past capital costs (e.g., the cost of the pipeline from Nacimierito Reservoir) as well as replacement fund for future repairs such as replacing Nacimiento or Whale Rock dams. Are they adequate proportionally? What are the offsets for water that are like the in lieu fee for parking downtown if new development does not provide its own water? Nothing in city documents about policy refers to what triggers a building moratorium. Is that judgment call made by a team at staff level and then recommended to City Council? Who are the people likely to be involved? What are some of the key factors leading to a moratorium? Does it happen when our supply of available measurable stored wet water is less than three years' worth? Is it related to water rationing? That is, do we go through Stages I, II, III, cutting our water use 50% before we stop new development? If we stop development at Phase I, does that mean 4 that landscape watering stops at II or something like that? What triggers the stopping of water to institutions and leaving the last buckets for residential users? Who makes the decisions about whether City Hall vs Sierra Vista gets water? Our current procedures seem vague, especially when compared to a scenario in which everyone is panicked and grabbing for as much water as they can get. If new development is stopped for a while, how does that actually happen? Is the application process stopped, or are design or building permits frozen, or water hookups denied? What is the process that indicates it is time for building to resume? Drought and Technological Solutions What intermediate technological solutions can be implemented and what is the lead time to put each of these into place, e.g., composting toilets, greywater for landscape? How long would it take to get to replace all the toilets in town? What about clothes washing and dish washing machines? Can new development that requires new water help subsidize these changes? What kinds of offsets are available? What is the possible/probable impact of the city's evaluation study of alternative uses of recycled water? Resource Winter 16 issue reports that the purpose of the study is to maximize "the beneficial uses of this high-quality water that is the end product of the treatment process." Monthly water bills can be a place for education as well as monitoring progress. Can it indicate how well the user is meeting conservation goals, and how they measure up against their neighbors? At a minimum, it ought to reassure users that if they conserve now, they will not be penalized in the future by some formula that uses this as an individual baseline for future reductions. People are worried that their conservation today may penalize them in the future compared to a neighbor who would not cooperate with conservation goals voluntarily. AN ADVANCED LOOK AT OUR SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT SOURCE OF WATER Nacimiento Reservoir factors: SLO County users are entitled to 17,500 acre feet (AF) of water a year from Nacimiento. The Nacimiento Reservoir is vast, so why worry? Nacimiento's capacity is 378,000 acre feet. SLO City's share of that is about 5500 AF a year. Each year over the past 56 years, there would have been enough water to meet our needs. But in the future, we can expect things to be different. How different depends on a number of factors. Some of these are physical, some are legal, others are sociological and political. A few are in our control but most are not. First, our entitlement is not ironclad. It dates from a contract written in 1959 that has never been tested in court, partly because we began drawing our share of its waters in earnest only five years ago. Now that we are taking our full allotment, and the drought is here, and global warming seems more than a vague threat, it is time to look at these factors more closely. At some critical points, the language of our County's contract guaranteeing 17,500 acre feet a year is not as strong as we would like. Once the reservoir's levels gets low and in danger of remaining low, once we dip into our protected waters in the last acre feet of the minimum pool, we can expect others who rely on the reservoir to a much greater extent, like the farmers of Monterey County, to want into our supply. So what are some of these pressures, over which we have little or no control? Over the past five years, our draw on Naci has gone from about 1750 acre feet per year to next year when it will likely be ten times that, that is, 17,500 AF a year (5500 for us and the rest for Atascadero, Templeton and Paso Robles who are also part of our contract with Monterey County.) That will increase the impact on Nacimiento. These steps were completely under our control. Overlapping jurisdictions: all of the following have varying degrees of authority over what happens in Nacimiento. The big one is the Monterey County Water Resources Agency (MCWRA), which owns the dam and governs how much water comes out on any given day and where it goes. Behind, next to, or above them is an array of regulatory agencies such as the Army Corps of Engineers, the CA Department of Dams and Reservoirs, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the CA Department of Fish and Game. They all have something to say, and it is difficult predicting when or how their voices will be heard or how far their legal arms will reach toward the spillway's spigot. Out of our control. N. Evaporation. Naci already loses as much as 20,000 acre feet a year to evaporation. Global warming will increase evaporation amounts because of higher temperatures year round and greater winds. How much more is unknown, but it could double the evaporation rate both in summer and in winter as well. Unknown impact. Out of our control. Global warming may reduce our rainfall by 2 to 4 inches annually. That will reduce the recharge to the reservoir by 20,000 to 40,000 AF per year (a conservative estimate). So the inflow to the reservoir will be less each year. A decrease in rainfall of 2-4 inches would create periods when there is no run-off into Naci. Unknown impact. Out of our control. Climatologists agree that whatever happens in the future, we can expect greater extremes in weather. So our droughts will be deeper and longer, and our storms will be greater. If the droughts are deeper, it will take longer for rainfall to saturate our watersheds before runoff appears in our reservoirs. If the storms are more severe, we may not be able to capture all the water usefully without stressing our reservoir system. This reduces the amount of water we will have by an indeterminate amount. One calculation shows a one in five chance of a zero run-off year by mid to late century. Two back to back would make us totally reliant on Whale Rock Reservoir. Unknown impact. Out of our control. When the reservoir does fill to overflowing, which has happened five times since it was built in 1959, much of that water—as much as 100,000 acre feet --is released to reduce pressure on the earthen dam and to flush silt buildup out of the Salinas River. The flushing of the Salinas has to be done periodically. Otherwise the river will turn into a floodplain and become useless. Such rapid reduction of water in Nacimiento reduces its effective working capacity to much less than its calculated capacity. Impact out of our control. The steelhead trout/salmon also need a strong stream flow to spawn. This calls for releases at other times in the year. Impact out of our control. The farmers in the Salinas River Valley need water to recharge their ground water to keep seawater from intruding and ruining it. The Nacimiento Dam contributes 62% of the water that flows into the river. The farmers depend hugely upon this water to keep seawater out of their groundwater. Unknown impact. Out of our control. The Monterey County Water Resources Agency (MCWRA) is activating plans to build a pipeline from Nacimiento Reservoir to Lake San Antonio. That pipeline will channel water from Nacimiento to San Antonio for storage until needed to recharge the Salinas Valley water basin. SLO County has no rights to water in Lake San Antonio, even though we helped to build the dam. The new pipeline will be built over and through SLO County land, so that gives us some leverage. MCWRA already has $25M of the est. $56M needed. Unknown impact. 7 The only one of the above factors completely within our control is how much water we as a City use. If Naci runs out, of course, we can't even use that water. That's why keeping our eye on this precious resource is critical to our continued safety as a community. Any increase in our water use must be undertaken only after the most stringent review and examination. This information compiled by your fellow citizens 8