About Cambria

Water is the hub of Cambria issues. Essential for living things, possessing qualities unique to itself, water is a critical part of the complex systems all over the planet. Tonight’s event will be at Rabobank from 6-8pm. It is billed as an educational and informational evening for Cambrians that will cover a number of topics related to alternative water sources. With so much to know about  the complexity of water management (assuring a reliable supply) and education in short supply, this may become the first of many such events. Tonight’s agenda includes talks from experts on clean water & conservation, greywater systems, storage ponds, and water supply. See the flyer below.

See you there!

Despite the fact that water supplies are undeniably constrained and climate change is likely to constrain them even more, there is more than enough water to go around — and that includes enough water to maintain the environmental and biological integrity of our rivers, streams, estuaries and wetlands.

In November 2004, the Planning and Conservation League (PCL) published “An Investment Strategy for California Water”. This publication (available online at PCL.org) concluded that new demands for water associated with California’s projected growth could not only be met, but could be met economically and without damaging California’s environment. The following year, the state Department of Water Resources essentially confirmed PCL’s findings in The California Water Plan Update 2005, Bulletin 160-05.

More recently, Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute has argued what we have is a water management problem, not a water shortage problem. If we were to manage our water use more efficiently, our limited resource could provide for more people. It means we need to change the “me” paradigm into a “we” paradigm. We need to make some fundamental changes in our behavior and our assumptions.

Here’s two important questions for everyone: How much are you and your 4,000 neighbors willing to pay for water without restriction? The current plan approved by the Board Is the plan to limit the number of connections a defensible  policy? Before you respond, just think about this: 4,650 customer are using water without restriction, but every other  lot owner inside the CCSD’s service area is out of luck because they aren’t on a list that was closed in 1990 and ceased producing new connections in 2001. You and I can waste all the water we can pay for while hundreds of others are denied service. Please help me see how this isn’t going to present a problem.

The third time really was the charm for the CCSD when it comes to an increase in the rates for water and wastewater. In just one afternoon, the District held the public hearing and then counted the letters of protest and support sent in or turned today. Five of us helped the count by opening envelopes and stapling the protest (or support) to the envelope for the consultant to count.

I won’t keep you in suspense – there were 401 letters of protest against the water rate increase and 405 against the wastewater increase. To stop the increase, the district would have to receive at least  1964  protests against water and 1909 against the sewer increase. With no organized effort against the increase, it was quickly obvious that the protest would not succeed. Several of those who spoke during the hearing made it clear they are still unhappy with the way the district is spending our money. No one spoke in favor of the increase, other than acknowledging the proposed budget needed an increase to keep from going into the red.

What’s it all mean? On your September bill, you’ll see an increase in your CCSD bill. WATER: 9.75% – Effective July 1, 2009 (Bill mailed September 10, 2009)  SEWER: 15% – Effective July 1, 2009 (Bill mailed September 10, 2009)  Below is the rates schedule included with the letter explaining the increase.

Old  Rate:                               New  Rates: Effective 7/1/09____(For 12 units)

Water Base $ 21.70                    Water Base $ 23.82

Water Units $ 33.06                  Water Units $ 36.30

Sewer Base $ 56.55                     Sewer Base $ 65.03

Sewer Units $ 18.59                     Sewer Units $ 21.34

TOTAL $ 129.90                              TOTAL $ 146.49

Next up? An increase to cover the capital improvement projects proposed. Stay tuned.

We’ve been on the current path toward desalination, carpooling with Bill D. Moratorium for nearly 10 years. Many studies have been commissioned and reviewed before the CCSD Directors back then decided how much water we need, at what level of reliability and at what cost to the community. How they interpreted the information and answered those questions continue to have a less than ideal affect on our lovely town.

I believe Cambria is full of intelligent, educated and thoughtful people (including the CCSD Board and Staff, no matter what they think). There are many of us here that missed the fun of the 1996 change of leaders and cancellation of a desal project that was ready to go. I think it’s critical to have information to make good decisions. In that light, then, here is an excerpt from Chapter 8 of Task 4 of the Water Master Plan. (The entire document is available for download on the CCSD website.

8.10 Comparison of Water Supply Alternatives
The potential long-term water supply alternatives were evaluated according to the following criteria:

• Water Supply Capabilities: ranked from < 600 AFY to 1,000 AFY
• Water Quality: ranked from Very poor to Excellent
• Reliability: ranked from None to More than Sufficient
• Required Agreements/Institutional Issues: ranked from Very Difficult to None Required
• Environmental Issues: ranked from Significant to None
• Permitting/CEQA: ranked from Very Difficult to None Required
• Cost: ranked as a combination of annual and variable costs from above average to below average
• Funding: ranked from None to Fully funded

Table 8-37 compares the evaluation for each of the alternatives discussed in this section and is based on the assumption that each criterion has equal weight. Alternatives with a score of 2.9 or higher were considered viable options for CCSD. Accordingly, CCSD should consider continuing
Demand Management and incorporating Recycled Water to reduce potable water demand in addition to implementing Seawater Desalination as a supplemental source during critically dry years. Because changes to the criterion weight may alter the final scores, alternatives with a
score between 2.5 and 2.9 may also be considered.

There are an infinite number of reasons people don’t pursue the facts necessary to make an informed decisions. Some of the reasons are even reasonably valid. (Of course, readers of this site value the access to information needed to make good decisions.) In reality, a majority of folks rely mostly on what they hear from their friends and neighbors, filtered through the their own life experiences.  Sometimes, people add what they learn on paper and online.  It often boils down to sound bites and choosing a side based on what your friends have chosen.

Here are some facts: In 2000 Kennedy-Jenks provided a report that has been the basis for the declaration of the Water Code 350 Emergency and the decision to pursue desalination. The report was part of developing a water master plan and included analysis of water use demand. It reported the average residential connection used about 9 units per billing cycle. They calculated a composite connection use of about 12 units, a number often given as “standard” use.  This “composite connection” was calculated

using the “mean annual” unit demand patterns, and assuming residential connections and commercial connections of 3,586 and 210, respectively, (i.e. their December 1999 values), the estimated residential, commercial, and total annual water demand are 578, 201, and 779 acre-feet, respectively. Dividing these values by the assumed number of connections produces annual residential and commercial unit water demand estimates of 0.161 and 0.959 acre-feet per connection, respectively.

In a recent study (Mayer et al, 1999), the indoor water requirements of 12 utilities were evaluated. One of the locations was Lompoc, California. The results of the evaluation are presented in Table 4-1. The mean daily per capita indoor water for the 12 locations was 69.3 gallons per capita per day (gpcd). The comparable use for Lompoc was 65.8 gpcd*, slightly less than the average. The indoor water uses are almost exclusively for human consumption and sanitation.

For comparison, the typical average annual water demand, both indoor and outdoor, for District customers is approximately 75 gpcd. Because a Dry Season water demand reduction of approximately 20 percent would be necessary to reach the indoor water use estimates, the declaration of a water shortage emergency for health and safety reasons would only be necessary for Stage 3.

*gpcd = gallons per capita per day

Translating gpcd into what you would see on your CCSD bill (which covers 2 months).  A CCSD billing unit is one hundred (100) cubic feet of water or 748 gallons.

65.8 gpcd = 5.4 units pcbm (per capita bi-monthly)

65.8 gpcd = 5.7 units pcbm (per capita bi-monthly)

75 gpcd = 6.1 units pcbm (per capita bi-monthly)

50 gpcd  = 4.1 units pcbm (per capita bi-monthly)

With the recent regulatory approval of the Carlsbad (San Diego) desalination plant to be built by Poseidon, chatter on the net about Desal seems to have gotten louder. Peter Gleick, President of the Pacific Institute recently posted two articles about desalination, its costs and energy requirements.

Even more interesting, in my opinion, is a report from non-profit organization Food and Water Watch‘s James Fryer titled: Sustaining Our Water Future: A Review of the Marin Municipal Water District’s Alternatives to Improve Water Supply Reliability.

Fryer served as coordinator  of the Marin Municipal Water District’s (MMWD) water conservation program from 1990 to 1999. According to their website Food and Water watch is  a nonprofit consumer organization based in Washington, D.C., with offices on the west coast. It works to ensure clean water and safe food in the United States and around the world.  They challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources by empowering people to take action and transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink.  Read their report on Marin’s Desalination plans here.

Our water supply is limited and improving the efficiency of how we use water can make a huge difference. Cambria has been living under a water code 350 emergency declaration since 2001. We’ve had surcharges for excessive use off and on during that time and constant admonitions to keep our water use to a minimum, not to mention restrictions on landscape watering, car washing and other water waste. The first year after the Code 350 declaration, water production actually went up, to the highest level since 1988. Since then, well production has gone down almost 14%.

Well production doesn’t necessarily equal water use, or the water that flows through the meters into our homes and businesses. The metered use since 2000 hasn’t been compiled, but Task 2 of the Water Master Plan includes details monthly average per connection use for two classes: residential and commercial.  You can review the data on editgrid and download an excel file to look at on your own computer.

Whether you support the decision of the CCSD Board to pursue desalination or not, when/if the plant ever begins operation, there will be additional rate increases to pay for that infrastructure and the processes the water is put through. Determining the cost of service for water  is more complex than a simple online calculator could determine. But to get an idea of how much it could cost you for desalinated water, Click here to enter your numbers to see how much  desal will cost per household, according to this site. Eco World has  a number of interactive calculators, all of which relate in some way to resources and the impacts of their use.

On August 21, 2008,  the  CCSD Board  approved the Final Program Environmental Impact Report of the Water Master Plan and then the Master Plan itself. In a nutshell, it describes the potential impacts adequate, reliable water may have on our community. The Master Plan includes a diversified collection of solutions to the water shortage – with the desalination in the starring role. For more than a dozen years, the CCSD has been working toward making this drought-proof source of water a reality. But acceptance of the Water Master Plan is hardly the end. No, now the really difficult decisions must be considered and action will require our elected officials to really be leaders.

But with the appearance of reliable water, Cambria will lose authority over the pace of growth. For eight years, under the California Water Code 350, the CCSD has administered a moratorium on new water connections. The practical result of this has been a building moratorium, because the County requires proof that the CCSD will provide services for a project before they will issue a permit to build.  When a new reliable water source is available, the CCSD will presumably begin to issue letters of intent to serve to those on the water wait list. If nothing changes with the County plan, the County will issue about 30-35 permits per year until the wait list is exhausted – in 2034.

The issue of growth for Cambria is a hot-button for many who’ve moved here since the 1980′s. The trouble seems to be, once there is enough water for everyone, keeping Cambria a small village will be next to impossible. It is difficult to justify an expensive desalination plant when the gap between available water and the water demand is 50-60 AF (less than Cambria currently use in one month.) It’s also difficult to justify limiting the number of households the CCSD will serve if a desalination plant is humming away, making drinking water enough for a town almost twice as big.

Just from a strict fairness standpoint, refusing to provide water to a property while the one right next door has a virtually unlimited supply to waste feels wrong.  Once the infrastructure is in place, expansion of a desal plant is mind-bogglingly easy. While the CCSD wants to make sure everyone who already lives here has sufficient water, they are also intent on ensuring Cambria remains a small town. It’s an balancing act requiring nimble and principled leaders and no small amount of strategy.  Private property rights must be balanced with the community’s desire to maintain the village atmosphere. They must consider the capacity of the resources and manage them appropriately. And let’s face it, managing an absolute known quantity is much easier than planning for an unknown number of homes using however much water they want from aquifers of  unknown capacity.

Cambria’s Water Master Plan defines the number of connections and a specific amount of water that will be available to those connections. It also describes a program that meant to keep Cambria from “Carmelizing” when water is no longer a limited resource. It’s called the Buildout Reduction Program.  In a nutshell, the program says, we like our town small and forested and it should stay that way, so we’ll just buy up the undeveloped properties and preserve them as open space. This plan would seem ludicrous or unworkable in many places, but not in Cambria. About 10 years ago, Cambrians organized and raised the support and money to purchase the Fiscalini Ranch (Called the East-West Ranch at the time) to prevent development on it.  Since then, Greenspace, the Cambria Land Trust, and others have worked to buy and retire vacant lots as they went up for sale with the intention they would always be open space. I’m sure it was this momentum, coupled with individual landowners recording conservation easements in many places, that CCSD intended to capitalize on and carry through into the envisioned Buildout Reduction Program (or Plan).

Unfortunately, no amount of momentum or determination on the part of Cambrians can force property owners to sell or voluntarily give up their property. In fact, a few of those property owners are who think they have a right to build on their residentially zoned property have filed an appeal in the Second Appellate District, Division 6. They are asking the appellate court to remand this matter to the Trial Court for consideration of the merits of Appellants’ claims for inverse condemnation by way of a land-use analysis, to stay the proceedings to allow Appellants an opportunity to submit a government claim, to amend the pleadings to petition for a writ of mandamus, and to proceed forward to litigate this matter on the merits thereof. The questions presented in that appeal are:

1. Whether a complaining landowner states a valid cause of action for inverse condemnation sufficient to survive demurrer when the fundamental issue raised in his complaint involves land-use principles?
2. Whether principles of res judicata apply to a complaining landowner when his present lawsuit arises out of and is based on a land-use permit application that was filed by the complaining landowner, and denied by governmental agencies, after the last time the complaining landowner and the governmental agencies had engaged in litigation and when the issue of the denial of the land-use permit had not been previously litigated?
3. Whether a party to an action’s due process rights are violated by imposing principles of res judicata to that party by an extension of
   principles of privity when that party has never filed any previous action and when the primary relationship between the complaining
   parties is limited to their status as plaintiffs in the same lawsuit?
4. Whether a four year statute of limitations is applicable in an as applied challenge to a statute when the statute was enacted more than four years prior to the date of filing of the complaint, but less than four years after it was applied to the circumstance of the specific plaintiffs?

What all that legeleze means is that the appellant thinks the trial court judge didn’t base his decision on the right laws. After reading the appellant’s brief, I think he might have a point. It will be interesting to see what the appellate judge decides.

What this means for Cambria: we are getting closer to the day when a judge will decide the future of our community. To my mind, there are two alternatives: lift the moratorium allow property owners to build at 1% per year up to the wastewater treatment plant capacity of 5,250. (It will be 2040 at that point.) Or face the reality of paying for all those properties that the CCSD will not serve – with a price tag of at least $39,000,000, probably much, much more

More homes and more Cambrians means more money for services and facilities (like fire protection and parks). It also means more demand for those services and facilities. The property taxes on those new homes is likely to be much more than taxes on homes that haven’t been re-assessed for over a decade or two. And connection fees will help underwrite some of the urgent infrastructure improvements we apparently need. More people would mean more wear and tear on the roads and other facilities. There are always trade-offs for communities as they try to map their future.

Our community is protected from becoming a community of McMansions by the standards of the North Coast Area Plan and the Cambria Design Plan as well as the County ordinances that implement those policies.The County is making an effort to set policy that is in line with what the community wants. Its time to give that responsibility back to the County.

The Regional Water Quality Control Board for the Central Coast Region (Central Coast Water Board) met last Friday (May 8). On the agenda was an update on Cambria’s MTBE situation. According to the report, the Central Coast Water Board staff oversees cleanup activities on numerous petroleum underground storage tank (UST) cases involving methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE).  Here is the part of the staff report concerning Cambria (the new information is presented in italics):

Chevron Cambria service station, located on the corner of Main Street and Burton Drive in Cambria, has been a Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board (Central Coast Water Board) lead groundwater investigation and cleanup case since December 1993. In 1995 Chevron Products Company commissioned the removal of a UST system and transferred ownership of the service station to an independent ownerloperator who installed a new UST system. Chevron is cleaning up a petroleum hydrocarbon discharge, including the fuel additive MTBE, from the original UST system. The discharge threatened groundwater in Cambria Community Service District (CCSD) Wells No. 1 and 3, which provide supplemental water to the community of Cambria.
As part of interim corrective action beginning in May 2000, Chevron continuously pumped MTBE contaminated water from four onsite wells. Currently, there are 15 shallow groundwater extraction wells in operation. Beginning in November 2000, Chevron began full operation of groundwater extraction and high-vacuum, dual-phase extraction systems. Both systems operate continuously,
except for periodic system upgrade, mechanical breakdowns, and system maintenance activities. Extracted and treated groundwater is stored in an onsite, 15,000-gallon tank until it is trucked offsite for disposal at the Santa Maria Wastewater Treatment Plant.
During a November 2001 technical work group meeting with Central Coast Water Board staff, CCSD representatives, and Chevron representatives, the CCSD indicated the new temporary high school well had been connected to the Cambria municipal drinking water supply. The CCSD needs the high school well as an alternative water supply. The CCSD installed a wellhead treatment system on their Santa Rosa Creek wells which will enable well use in the event of an emergency. The Santa Rosa Creek Wells have not been impacted with IMTBE. On May 18, 2004, the Central Coast Water Board’s Executive Officer rescinded Cleanup or Abatement Order (CAO) No. 00-28. The CAO required Chevron to provide CCSD with alternative water supply due to loss of CCSD’s Well Nos. 1 and 3. The settlement agreement between CCSD and Chevron explicitly resolves all of CCSD’s claims against Chevron, including claims for an alternative water supply.

Since the Last Staff Report:
The Fourth Quarter 2008 Groundwater Monitoring and Remediation Status Report indicates fhe following:
Monitoring wells within the plume boundaries continue to exhibit MTBE and tertiary butyl alcohol (TBA) concentrations exceeding the cleanup goals of 5 micrograms per liter (pg/L)and) 12 pg/L, respectively; however, current concentrations have decreased significantly compared to historical maximum values. The fourth quarter 2008 maximum MTBE concentration was detected in piezometric well P-5 at 620 pg/L and the maximum TBA concentrations was detected in monitoring well MW-7 at 170 pg/L.  Historically, maximum concenfrations of MTBE and TBA were as high as 5,500 pg/L and 8,80Opg/L, respectively. Shallow-zone MTBE and TBA isoconcenfration maps are shown on Attachments 1 and 2, respectively. Monitoring wells historically located beyond the plume boundaries continue to be free of detectable concentrations of MTBE and TBA. The high-vacuum, dual phase extraction system was not operated during the fourth quarter 2008. Chevron started an oxygenated groundwater infiltration system at the site to enhance the biodegradation of the petroleum hydrocarbon plume. The groundwater extraction and treatment (GWET) system operated during the reporting quarter. The GWET system extracted and treated approximately 15,000 gallons of groundwafer during the fourth quarter; 10,000 gallons were aerated and re-infiltrated into the subsurface (as described in the following bullet) and the remaining 5,000 gallons were disposed at the City of Santa Maria wastewater plant. On October 15, 2008, Stantec Consulting Corporation (Stantec) initiated the infiltration of oxygenated water at the site. Approximately 10,000 gallons of treated and oxygenated groundwater were infiltrated into the source-zone via infiltration wells MW-IR, HVE-4 and HVE-11. Stantec will continue the oxygenated groundwater infiltration activities, sample collection and analysis to evaluate performance of the enhanced in-situ bioremediation technology.

Read the full report and past reports at the geotracker website.