Cities balk at Russian River water plan

Representatives form Sonoma County's major cities balked Monday at endorsing the Water Agency's plans to drop a $1 billion water supply project, but they stopped short of opposing the historic shift in water policy.

During a three-hour session, council members and water engineers from Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Windsor, Sonoma and northern Marin County said they did not have time to assess the effect on their cities of an end to the Water Agency's two-decade pursuit of efforts to double its draw of water from the Russian River.

“The haste that is being proposed in unfortunate, but abandoning a plan that we have been working on for 20 years is ill-advised,” said Marin Municipal Water District General Manager Paul Helliker.

Petaluma Mayor Pam Torliatt lamented that her city council had raised objections to the water project a decade ago and those were not taken seriously.

She said she supports the policy change that includes abandoning pursuit of a water pipeline from Lake Sonoma. However, she added, “we lost 10 years in the process and our decision how to fit in, in three weeks is just not going to happen.”

Water Agency officials said they are scrambling to meet a Sept. 24 deadline of announcing how they intend to comply with federal biological regulations governing fish protection in Dry Creek. Agency officials announced the policy reversal last week and surprised county supervisors, who serve as Water Agency directors, decided to give cities that have contracts for water another three weeks to review it.

Water Agency officials said the original pipeline proposal is too expensive at nearly $500 million and their draft environmental impact report is too open to challenge. Their first report was successfully challenged in court by environmental groups and their second effort was peppered with objections that the project is unfeasible and unnecessary.

“It is time to look at the cost of what is on our planning horizon,” Water Agency assistant general manager Grant Davis told nearly 100 people representing cities and environmental groups meeting at the Santa Rosa waste treatment plant. “We agree that raising rates beyond what we have is not going to work.”

The Water Agency's reversal means the 600,000 customers in Sonoma and northern Marin counties will have to settle for drawing no more than 75,000 acre-feet of water out of the river annually, rather than a 101,000 acre-feet allotment that planners had been seeking.

Most city officials said Monday they were comfortable that there is no impending water shortage because the Water Agency only delivered 55,000 acre-feet to customers last year.

However, several officials also said the change in policy would force cities to enact new water conservation measures in order to ensure that growth does not outstrip water supply.

“We will have to move forward with water conservation at much greater speed,” said Miles Ferris, Santa Rosa's director of utilities.

Jake Mackenzie, Rohnert Park councilman who heads the advisory committee of water contractors, said cities will be forced to redouble efforts to encourage use of recycled water and to develop new measures such as injection of water to boost aquifer levels.

“Water behind Warm Spring Dams is not going to go away,” Mackenzie said. “What the circumstances are of it being available is unknown to us.”

Mackenzie said city officials and water engineers would discuss the shift in Water Agency policy at their October and November meetings, which means county supervisors will have to reach a decision on the policy change at their Sept. 15 meeting without endorsement from the cities.