Running Water

The big action at today’s SCVWD Board meeting was a direction to District staff to craft a mandatory conservation plan, ready to implement in case renewed calls for voluntary 10% conservation fall short. The directors also expressed strong support for tiered pricing, where heavier water users pay more than the thrifty. About half of the municipal water retailers, including Morgan Hill and San José, already have tiered pricing, and the San José Water Company is, according to CEO George Belhumeur, currently working with the Public Utilities Commission to implement it themselves.

This is a good place to point to the Aguanomics blog, by David Zetland, who calls for a true market in water to allocate resources more efficiently.

The water supply outlook presentation was pretty darn grim. If 2009 is an average year, we’ll be holding our own, but, if it’s a critically dry year, then the difference between demand and supply is an breathtaking 230,000 acre-feet. The supply in this forecast is not even half of the expected demand.

Directors Kwok and Santos also called out strongly for increased use of recycled water, both in streamflow augmentation, if possible, and in new development along North First Street in San José. Chair Kamei pointed out that the joint District-City committee on recycled water will not meet for the first time until August.

A very interesting fact pointed out by Mr. Belhumeur is the seasonal difference in water use due to outdoor irrigation. A typical winter day sees the San José Water Company delivering 85 million gallons of water, while that number often rises to 220 million gallons in the summer. Due to this past very dry spring, residents turned on their sprinklers in March instead of May, and year-on-year water use jumped up. Outdoor water use is really where residential customers can make the biggest impact, but it requires a much bigger investment to replace thirsty landscaping. Turning off the faucet when you brush your teeth doesn’t have quite the same effect.

Tonight’s public hearing for the Alviso Slough Restoration Project was well-attended by supporters of the project. I’d estimate there were 125 people in the audience, and more than 50 got up to speak in favor, with 20-30 turning in comment cards to be read into the record. Katherine Oven began with a presentation that summarized the six identified alternatives, but Alternative 5, “the whole enchilada,” as several people referred to it, is what everyone meant when they referred to the project.

As I’ve noted before, there is a very strong feeling among Alvisans that they are owed recompense for years of neglect. One can argue that the Santa Clara Valley Water District is not the agency responsible for the recreational needs and economic revitalization of Alviso, but it happens to be the agency with the money.

More disturbing to me was the insistence that Alternative 5 would make residents safer from flooding. Ms. Oven carefully stressed that the project will maintain existing levels of riverine flood protection. The area of the channel that would be dredged is still some 2 miles upstream of the bay. Flood waters would speed up in the deeper section, then run into the still-narrow downstream channel and back up, flowing around existing levees and through New Chicago Marsh back into Alviso.

Of course, this wouldn’t be allowed; Alternative 5 calls for measures to mitigate this danger. But it is an article of faith that the Alviso Slough Restoration Project is a flood control project, and is necessary to avert another disaster like the flooding in 1983. No one is talking about dredging the entire channel out to the bay.

There were several interesting comments. Charles Taylor noted that, of the $500 million spent in total on flood protection work on the Guadalupe River, $22 million was probably wasted, so Alternative 5 was comparatively very cheap. He also opined that many more people would get enjoyment from a restored Alviso marina than would ever use the river trail through downtown, or the expensive landscaping that was such a big part of the $500 million for the rest of the river. Eddie Souza, the former mayor of Santa Clara, thought that a revitalized Alviso marina could become a new transportation center for the South Bay, and could even play a role in emergency evacuations.

But the overriding feeling of the meeting was that Alviso deserves this project because of the neglect that it has suffered over the years.

Dick Santos has had it up to here.

Paul Rogers has written a good article in this morning’s Mercury about the Alviso Slough Restoration Project, in the run-up to Wednesday’s public meeting. I would go farther in stressing that the strong feeling among Alvisans in support of this project seems to come from their living sense of historical grievance. I do understand how a community that has been flooded so many times in recent memory might not trust the powers that be, but why involve hydrological engineers at all if you don’t accept their findings?

I think that the important thing for Alviso has become the mere spending of large amounts of money on Alviso. The proposed Gold Street Education Center is another example: the discussion at the Board meeting on 24 June focused on what a wonderful amenity it would be for the community, with no mention of the programs it’s supposed to foster, or who would provide or even attend them.

Although the charges of neglecting Alviso are usually aimed at San Jose, it’s the Santa Clara Valley Water District that has the big bucks. As the article says, spending $22 million on this project is taking away from other, county-wide flood protection priorities. Everyone who lives in Santa Clara County has a stake in this, and I encourage everyone to attend the public meeting on Wednesday the 16th at 7:00 at George Mayne Elementary School.

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I’ve been happy to see the recent coverage of the SCVWD in the Mercury. Paul Rogers has written stories on the new water quality lab and the groundbreaking for the upper Guadalupe project. Scott Herhold has written a somewhat more critical piece on the proposed Gold Street Educational Center. This morning, Paul Rogers reported on CEO Olga Martin Steele’s high salary and state pension, since extending her contract was on the agenda for today’s Board meeting.

The meeting was a speedy one, with item after item disposed of sans discussion or dissenting votes. When the contract extension came up, Board members were fulsome in their praise. Director Estremera recounted how the Board had “begged” Ms. Steele to take the job, and how much of a hardship is must pose to her, with all of the travel and disruption of her planned retirement. Director Santos echoed this gratitude, and went on to complain that the real reason that the newspaper was critical of the District’s CEO is because she’s a woman.

Director Kwok, after joining in the chorus of thanks to Ms. Steele, did say that it is time for the Board to find a permanent replacement, but no one seemed inclined to take that anywhere. If, as the article says, she’s likely to quit at the end of 2008 to preserve her $180,000 state pension, the Board doesn’t have a lot of time to waste.

It should come as no surprise that the Board voted unanimously to extend her contract by six months, and Paul Rogers has already posted a follow-up article reporting so.