For GWD’s New General Counsel, Water’s In Her Blood
http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/0106_for_gwds_new_general_counsel_waters_in_her_blood/
By Sonia Fernandez, Noozhawk Staff Writer
Fran Farina, who has had a longtime interest in water issues, is familiar with the inner workings of the Goleta Water District and is ready to dive into its challenges.
With water becoming an increasingly complex issue in the Goleta Valley, it takes a certain kind of person to want to jump into the fray.
Fran Farina is eager to prove she is just that kind of person as she takes up her post as general counsel for the Goleta Water District.
“Ever since I moved to California in 1987, I’ve been interested in water,” Farina said.
It was just the beginning of a great statewide drought, and she noticed trees on her property were dying because the local utility was pumping the water table down too low. It wasn’t long before she dived into local water issues, getting herself elected to the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District board of directors in 1991.
“I took the California Bar promising I would only do water law,” said the attorney, who had practiced in Florida before her move to the West Coast.
Farina said there are similarities between the Goleta Valley and Monterey Peninsula districts: Both are relatively isolated in terms of water sources that are subject to drought and oversubscription because of development.
“Both have water supplies that are adjudicated,” she said, “and both have river supplies that contain species that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.”
The big difference is that the Goleta district eventually hooked up to State Water while the Monterey Peninsula district did not.
“The irony is that we actually do get enough water ... we just don’t have it when we need it,” Farina said.
It isn’t uncommon, she said, for reservoirs to be flooded by winter rains and then have a water shortage six months later because of dry weather and increased demand during the summer.
Even State Water isn’t the reliable source it was once thought to be. The Sierra snowpack, which is its source, is being affected by climate change — resulting in an early and rapid melt. Downstream, fisheries and habitats wrangle over water supply. Northern California, Farina said, isn’t happy about having to send its water south. But without water, Southern California’s economy would collapse, affecting the entire state.
Locally, officials are still waiting to see what the State Water Resources Control Board might say about the supply at Lake Cachuma, which supplies about 80 percent of the South Coast’s water. Steelhead trout in the Santa Ynez River, which flows to Cachuma, are listed as a threatened species that may require limits to how much water ultimately can be diverted.
“Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over,” said Farina, quoting the old saw often attributed to Mark Twain.
But it isn’t as though she doesn’t know what she’s getting into. Since her arrival in Goleta in 2002, Farina has been interested in the workings of the Goleta Water District, even trying out for the job of legal counsel two years ago when district counsel Russel Ruiz resigned. She and her firm, De Lay & Laredo, interviewed for the position, but the post went to Chip Wullbrandt of Price, Postel & Parma.
Even before her first official legal opinion of 2009, her move to her new position has been the subject of controversy for Goleta Water District watchers. The new board majority of Bert Bertrando, Lauren Hanson and Bill Rosen have been called hypocrites for allegedly appointing Farina to replace Wullbrandt as counsel without providing the requisite public notice required by the Brown Act.
“Without any discussion with fellow board members, without proper notice in the agenda and without even the process of interviews and a proper selection procedure, with one blink of an eye, Bert Bertrando, Lauren Hanson and Bill Rosen threw out the district’s council, Chip Wullbrandt, who has an amazing background in water law with years of experience, and voted in Fran Farina,” former district board member Lynette Mills wrote in a recent letter to Noozhawk in reference to the district’s Dec. 16 board meeting.
According to Farina, who attended that meeting, the directors didn’t take any action to replace Wullbrandt at that time; they only set up the agenda for the special meeting three days later to discuss a new appointee for general counsel.
“I knew her in the context of going to Goleta Water District meetings,” Hanson said of Farina. “And I’ve seen her as a person making informed public comment for several years.”
When it came time to consider a replacement, she said, Farina’s resume was already on file from her application two years ago.
“I think both (Wullbrandt and Farina) are very capable and certainly well-qualified,” Hanson said, “and I think it comes down to who a board feels more comfortable working with.”
For Bertrando, who has been on the board for two years, the comfort level had to do with conflicts of interest.
“Here we had a Long-Range Development Plan from UCSB that we couldn’t comment on because we didn’t have an attorney for it,” he said. According to Bertrando, Wullbrandt couldn’t work on the UCSB issue because of a potential conflict of interest within Price, Postel & Parma.
UCSB is the Goleta Water District’s single largest customer and plans a 20-year development plan that will increase its water usage beyond even what the district can supply.
For a time, the board hired another attorney to handle relations with UCSB, but ultimately, Bertrando said, it would be more efficient to hire a single attorney with no potential for conflict of interest with other local entities. Farina’s law firm, which practices water law in Monterey, fit the bill, he said.
Farina has less than two weeks before the first district board meeting of 2009. Although she has been aware of issues for the past six years, she still finds a lot ahead of her as she pushes to catch up with the district’s ongoing legal matters.
That’s to be expected for someone working on an issue that’s becoming increasingly complex and important for the Goleta Valley and throughout California.
“It’s just a fascinating area that I find very challenging,” Farina said. “Every time you think you have an answer to a problem, you realize that there are two or three other little problems that need to be resolved.”
Write to sfernandez@noozhawk.com
http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/0106_for_gwds_new_general_counsel_waters_in_her_blood/