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County to start work on regional water plan |
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Monday, 06 August 2007 |
By Jon Klusmire
Register Staff
Inyo County needs to create a new, comprehensive, regional water management plan that will help it to tap into state funding for water-related projects and programs.
It could take up to three years to get an Integrated Regional Water Management Plan completed and approved, but that would be time well spent since the plan would form the foundation for the county’s efforts to obtain a wide range of state grants dealing with water issues.
“For all practical purposes, we have to have an IRWMP” to get grants from the state and, more specifically, to tap into the billions of dollars in Prop 50 and Prop 84 grants which were set aside for water-related projects and improvements, said Inyo County Water Department Director Tom Brooks.
The regional water management plan will be essential for obtaining state funds for projects ranging from the Lower Owens River Project to improving drinking water in communities, he said. With a regional water management plan in place, a handful of county departments, from Public Works to Environmental Health to Agriculture, would be able to apply for the wide range of specific grant funds available from the state, Brooks noted. Community Service Districts operating water systems could also use the document to supplement their grant applications, he said. While those departments could use grant funds to expand or improve their programs, the county Water Department might need grant money just to stay afloat.
The Water Department is looking at a fiscal crisis in about three years, Brooks said. Being able to use grant funds to help defray the department’s ongoing, rising costs could become critical to keeping the Water Department functioning at its current level and avoiding layoffs.
“We’re at our breaking point,” Brooks said, with costs increasing faster than funding for the Water Department. The department is funded solely by money the county receives yearly from LADWP, under the terms of the Long-Term Water Agreement. The inflation-adjusted payment isn’t keeping pace with payroll and other costs in the department, creating “the familiar structural deficit,” Brooks said.
In 2007-08, the LADWP payment was about $1.3 million. Payroll costs will consume about 80 percent of that money, he noted. At the current rate, in 2009-10, costs will outpace the LADWP payment, he predicted.
Thus, the ability to obtain grants that will cover a portion of staff time could make the difference between sending General Fund money to the Water Department or cutting programs and implementing layoffs, he said.
Creating the regional water plan could take as little as nine months, or could consume up to three years, depending on what the Board of Supervisors wants to include in the plan, he noted.
For years, the county has presented state agencies and grant-givers the Inyo-L.A. Long-Term Water Agreement as its “water-management plan” for the county. That worked for a while, Brooks noted, but now the state’s grant guidelines and requirements have grown more complex, and competition for the state money has become fierce.
Brooks said he asked the administrators of the Prop 50 grants if the Long-Term Water Agreement would be sufficient to meet the grant guidelines, and was told that the agreement now falls short when it comes to a regional water management plan.
The tough thing to swallow about that determination, Brooks noted, is that “Prop 50 and Prop 84 funds are tailor-made for LORP.”
Brooks pointed out that the current estimates for the county’s share of the ongoing management of LORP for its first 15 years of operation is estimated to be about $13.5 million. (Under the LTWA, the county and LADWP split LORP costs.)
The county received one round of LORP grants and then got $5.2 million from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to replace a promised federal grant for LORP. That money was split between construction and “post implementation costs.” The county will also get about $3.3 million in fines paid by LADWP from the latest LORP lawsuit.
By most accounts, the county is still looking for at least $2.2 million, at the very least, to pay its share of LORP costs in the coming years, Brooks said. But he added that those cost estimates for LORP were made in 2000, thus the final costs could be far higher, just by taking inflation into account, not to mention the cost of fixing some unforeseen, major problem with the project, such as flood damage.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty” with regard to the final county tab for LORP, he noted.
Those costs, he added, were just for keeping up with monitoring and management, and didn’t include ambitious plans and goals to add numerous recreational amenities to the “new” stretch of river.
It appears that Prop 84 funds, or grants from the newly created Sierra Nevada Conservancy, would be a perfect match for making improvements and enhancing the Lower Owens, said Brooks. But in both cases, the county would have a far better chance at landing a grant if it had an Integrated Regional Water Management Plan showing how the grant funds fit into the big picture when it comes to water management.
In fact, funding the creation of regional water management plans is one of the stated priorities for the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, he noted.
That’s part of the good news about the money from the propositions. Brooks said the Water Department would apply for a “pre-planning grant” from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy in the range of $50,000. That money would be used to hire a consultant who would help outline the size, scope and detail of any Integrated Regional Water Management Plan.
That might sound simple, but the sheer size of Inyo County means some tough decisions about what to include and what to leave out of any regional plan.
Brooks said that the state likes to see plans based on watersheds, of the Owens River for example. If that’s the case, the plan would have to include Mono County (which would make it “regional”) and take into account the water policies of the Forest Service, local Indian tribes, the City of Bishop, LADWP and Southern California Edison. (Brooks said one state complaint about the Long-Term Water Agreement is that it only involved the county and LADWP.)
Or, a county-wide plan could be considered, which would not only include the Owens River, but the desert regions of the county and their unique water situations. The Amargosa River in Southeast Inyo, for example, and the aquifers in the Sandy Valley area would require a completely different water management approach and goals.
Once the consultant, the Water Department and the supervisors determine the scope of the water management plan, then it would take another grant to actually complete the planning document, said Brooks. That grant could cost up to $500,000.
The first step on any new water management plan, he stressed, would be to work with LADWP to get a clear outline of the dozens of agreements, legal opinions, court orders and other “controlling documents” that currently define the water relationship between the county and LADWP. Those “controlling documents” would not be altered or changed to fit the new plan, he stressed, but would instead become the foundation for a new, comprehensive regional water management plan.
The supervisors directed Brooks to begin applying for “pre-planning” grants and otherwise begin the process that will eventually lead to a new Integrated Regional Water Management Plan for Inyo County.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 10 September 2007 )
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