Increasing water is important for Santa Barbara County’s long-term supply, to bank water in times of plenty and withdraw it in dry times, according to longtime Central Coast Water Authority Executive Director Ray Stokes. 

He’s retiring this year after nearly 30 years with the agency, which manages the State Water Project for Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.  

Stokes reflected on his time at CCWA and looked forward to what he — and his successor — thinks is a pressing issue for the region: water banking.  

“CCWA is absolutely going to have to invest in water storage,” Stokes said. “The primary reason for that is climate change has created these massive swings in hydrology; we go from a lot of water to not a lot, and I’m oversimplifying it obviously.” 

Incoming director Peter Thompson starts this week as an associate director and will train with Stokes for several months before taking over the CCWA in May. The board hired him for the position in December. 

“We’ve got an intensive training plan laid out. I already warned him it’s like drinking from a firehose,” Stokes said. “He knows the State Water Project, so that’s a huge advantage.” 

Thompson most recently worked as assistant general manager at the Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency, which is the State Water Project contractor for Kern, Ventura and Los Angeles counties. 

“Taking the torch from Ray is pretty exciting,” Thompson said. 

They’ve served together on the State Water Contractors board, and he’s seen Stokes be a “fierce and relentless advocate for CCWA” in Sacramento, he said. 

Thompson said he has about 15 years of experience with state water and advocacy work on behalf of AVEK and the Palmdale Water District. 

The Central Coast Water Authority has eight members: the cities of Buellton, Guadalupe, Santa Barbara and Santa Maria; the Carpinteria Valley Water District; the Goleta Water District; the Montecito Water District; and the Santa Ynez River Water Conservation District, Improvement District No. 1. 

Future Water Storage Needs

State water deliveries were more steady, historically, but now have dramatic shifts from year to year, Stokes said. During a drought in 2014, the CCWA was getting only 5% of its contracted state water deliveries, and in the years since, the number has ranged from 5% to 100%.

“I know one of the critical things for CCWA is developing some storage to provide certainty, so they can bring in that water during wet years and store that for dry years,” Thompson said. 

The storage needs to be reliable and affordable, he noted: “It could be new surface storage or expansion, but there’s also a big emphasis on investing in groundwater storage banks.”

It would be easier to find something upstream in the State Water Project system, rather than downstream, for transporting the water.

Stokes said there may be some local storage opportunities, but typically the available groundwater banking is in the Central Valley, which is downstream of the CCWA’s coastal branch facilities.

“The water is below where we take the water off the main stem of the California aqueduct,” he said.

That would create challenges getting the water here, and likely competition with other state water contractors to withdraw water from those banks in drought years, Stokes noted. 

The demand for water storage may vary among water agencies in the CCWA, since each of them has a different water supply portfolio, Stokes said. 

Water Supply Forecast This Year

Lake Cachuma is full, but water agency managers are watching the state’s snowpack, which hasn’t grown much since the storms in early January. 

“The State Water Project relies so much on snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada (mountains),” Thompson said. “If we don’t have a significant snowpack and it doesn’t melt in a slow, methodical way, we can still end up with lower-than-average allocations.” 

The weather forecast shows snow next week for the mountains and some rain possible for Santa Barbara County. 

The region is coming off a fairly good water year, with a 40% State Water Project allocation, Stokes noted.

During drought years, Thompson said, he worked hard on water deals to make sure AVEK districts had the supplies they needed. 

“I like solving those water puzzles, and I have the knowledge and the relationships to make that happen,” he said. 

Water infrastructure and supply issues tend to get more attention in challenging times than good times. 

“My goal is to make water as boring as possible during my tenure,” Thompson said.