The city of Santa Barbara is making progress on negotiations for a deal to sell water to the Montecito Water District and recoup about $20 million of desalination-facility reactivation costs, leading toward the regional use of the seawater-to-potable water plant.
Without a reliable groundwater supply, Montecito is desperate to get a new water source, and started plans for building its own desalination plant before it began negotiations to purchase water from Santa Barbara.
After months of confidential talks, Santa Barbara and Montecito have come together on basic terms for water sales and hope to finalize an agreement later this year.
“It’s a big step but it’s nowhere near a done deal,” city water resources manager Joshua Haggmark said.
After going back and forth on terms for months, both sides are supportive of a 20-year term with Montecito buying 1,250 acre-feet of water every year, he told the Water Commission at Thursday’s meeting.
The city can decide the source of the water, although in dry years it will undoubtedly be desalinated water, Haggmark noted.
Montecito Water District general manager Nick Turner spoke briefly at the meeting, and said the community has cut water use by about 40 percent but wants a new, permanent water supply.
Final negotiations should be done by October — when the plant comes online — and it’ll take another two years or so to increase the production capacity from 3,125 acre-feet-per-year to 4,375 acre-feet, Haggmark said.
Montecito would pay about 29 percent of the fixed operation and maintenance costs — based on its percentage of the plant’s production — and for the water itself.
The district would also pay 40 percent of the initial reactivation costs, which comes out to be about $20 million, and the costs of a pipeline connecting the desalination plant to the South Coast Conduit, Haggmark said.
City staff gave an update on local conservation numbers, and said Santa Barbara is using about the same amount of water now, with 5,000 more residents, than it did with outdoor watering bans during the 1987-1992 drought — about 9,800 acre-feet per year.
People need to keep up the water savings, city staff said, so commissioners unanimously recommended that the City Council increase the mandatory 25-percent conservation rate to 35 percent, but with no additional restrictions.
The commission got a presentation about the newest urban water management plan, which doesn’t reflect the changing drought environment. It assumes the status quo for water supply and demand, and staff said there wasn’t time to do a comprehensive update in time for the state deadline.
Commissioner Dave Davis said it’s “very unnerving to be doing planning on conditions we know are going to change.”
A lot of information for long-term water supply planning is up in the air — not the least of which is how long the drought will last.
There are studies to determine the safe yield of Lake Cachuma which could change how much water is pumped out for South Coast agencies each year, and all that information will factor into the next update, staff said.
— Noozhawk managing editor Giana Magnoli can be reached at gmagnoli@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
