South OC Wastewater Authority: Is The One Water Movement Already DOA?

South Orange County Wastewater Authority: Is The One Water Movement Already DOA?

My attendance at the most recent of the seemingly interminable death march, marathon Board of Director (BOD) hearings and attendant workshops hosted by the South OC Wastewater Authority (SOCWA) has unfortunately revealed ZERO interest in what many of our So Cal neighbors proposed and then embraced long ago: Regional supply tactics, the so-called One Water Movement (OWM).

Variations and regional branding exist, depending on the future needs and planning regarding drinking and/or irrigation water sustainability. The US Water Alliance considers itself “the hub for the One Water Movement,” bragging that it’s “webpage is a gateway to connect with resources and fellow One Water leaders.” [1]

The City of San Diego is primarily focused on drinking water independence, through long-range planning, lessening the reliance on No Cal/Delta supplies or supplements from the controversial Colorado River Project. They have dubbed their effort Pure Water San Diego. [2]

The City of Los Angeles started over a decade ago with their One Water LA 2040 Plan vision. This is what a true OWM effort looks like, it takes decades of planning and infrastructural implementation, complex utility cooperation agreements to get to the aspirational, inspirational goals and objectives: More independence, less reliance, greater local resiliency and reliability portfolios. [3]

Metropolitan Water District of So Cal (MET) is the big dawg broker, and having so much power and influence, being in charge of and profiting from our imported water needs, it isn’t folding in anyone’s lifetime.

OC Water & Sanitation Districts plus the Municipal Water District of OC (MWDOC) have been harshly criticized, heavily lobbied, pressured off and on to create a monolithic, cohesive and united endeavor by our OC Grand Jury, journalists and other entities.

Ha Ha Ha. The OC Grand Jury can write all of the scathing, rebuking reports chastising this feudal, convoluted and yes, often resented, redundant system it desires, but its clarion call to consolidate, to merge them would require consensus: Which flies our skies in California about as often as Halley’s Comet.

Most of our elected officials and their staffs laughed at the most recent OCGJ report: “Water in Orange County Needs One Voice,” and we in the deep south probably laughed the loudest. [4]

Here we know that we’re NOT central or northern OC, totally different groundwater storage capacity dynamics (minuscule compared to other areas), self-limiting surface topographic/hydro-geologic storage conditions but that doesn’t stop some ivory tower chowderheads in Santa Ana from issuing edicts that’ll never go down.

Making all of their nowhere plans for nobody, an audience that’s not listening and can’t be legally compelled that I know of.

Some SOC water utility campfire chats are about conservation, finding conventional and emerging or advanced treatment technologies that could help us with innovative ways to increase local water supplies. Increasing use of solar to offset energy costs, exploration of self-sufficient, self-contained treatment facilities via bioreactors. Once sci-fi stuff, now evolutionary reality.

Finding room, when most of our open space has already been committed in perpetuity as mitigation for development, or carved out pockets of public parks and wilderness, doesn't leave us a whole hell of a lot of options.

Things like stormwater system (MS4) diversions from low flow, non-rainy surplus runoff (“nuisance water”) plus minor rainfall events (around .1”/day), water reuse (reclamation of influent/post plant-treated effluent), and a minor augmenter, brackish stream and ocean desalination are our alternative source candidates.

Those who have been converted, brainwashed or try to peddle ocean desalination as the silver bullet, our water reliability calvary coming over the hill, are exaggerating. 10% at most ever of what we need.

Two recent professionally Facilitated Workshops (5/04 & 5/18), in another projected series of “all hands on deck” gatherings (OMG, it's déjà vu all over again), hosted by SOCWA, are just the latest attempt to determine the future of these reclamation elements, including ownership and operation of treatment infrastructure in SOC.

In 2021, ≈20,000 acre feet was reportedly discharged from SOCWA members treatment plants, into SOCWA's Pacific ocean outfall pipes. The discharges contain secondary and briny waste water treatment residuals commingled here in SOC via the Aliso and San Juan Creeks Ocean Outfalls.

It’s been claimed that’s about 25% of our total imported, foreign-developed drinking water purchases. That H2O which MET and MWDOC preside over and control distribution thereof.

There’s lots of knee-jerking regarding Direct Potable Reuse (DPR) usage, aka the“toilet-to-tap YUK factor”: Residents have a pre-disposed opinion about reclamation of the very sources that could guarantee delivery even during droughts or emergencies.

SOC folk are no different, it’s possible that all of the slick PR flacks in the world will never convince a sizable segment of our population from balking or outright rejecting our best supplementary bet, DPR.

Surprise! Wastewater is now properly viewed as an asset, a harvesting opportunity . It’s alimentary, my dear Watson.

Here in SOC, industry officials seem to balk at any mention of a master plan that smacks of the “one-for-all, all-for-one interdependency” aka OWM. They actually wince in disdain, or appear lifeless, remain expressionless when I’ve broached it at their meetings. Right now, that’s apparently a bridge too far.

It should be noted that although publicly NOT open proponents of the OWM, as I’ve observed thus far, both the Moulton Niguel (MNWD) and Santa Margarita Water Districts (SMWD) have anticipated and been ready for DPR for quite some time.

They have positioned themselves, moved the DPR needle forward by proposing modestly transformative, consolidated and optimized plans for SOCWA.

In a conflict of interests between these 2 largest and the other JPA members with less "skin" (effluent) in the reclamation and outfall waste discharge game, smaller customer bases, MNWD/SMWD proposed blueprints have hit the limitation barriers of transactional agencies.

When it’s Transformative vs. Transactional, things slow down considerably, more akin to Irresistible Force meets Immovable Object.

The elephants in these rooms, truth be told, constitute an unavoidable fact: Several JPA members have litigated fellow members in the recent past, the subsequent expenses hefty. Two stand out, I won't go into details but it's obvious that the wounds haven't healed let alone scabbed over.

Both have fomented general distrust, the fallout like post H-Bomb radiation continues to subliminally distort, effect decision making trees and team building mindsets.

One protracted case is still open (started in 2015), and who knows how much in legal fees, staff time, etc., has it cost all sides? Bound and forced to remain together in "shotgun weddings" via long term charters must have taken mental tolls no doubt.

One has to wonder: What WERE these litigants thinking? Did they not compare, perform risk-benefit assessments? Did they not professionally identify, see a future where their litigation would come back to haunt them, be seen as fiduciary betrayals, poison the well of potential alliance processes in advance?

Below is a stone skip, partial list of such frustrating false start series requiring multiple meetings.

The deciding members of that effort have unfortunately been in a continuous loop queue focused solely on governance, ownership, O&Ms, plus reorganization of this JPA going back some 4 years.

Some declare that SOCWA was hastily organized, flawed from Day 1 in 2001. Others? If it ain't broke, why fix it?

• The Evaluation of Wastewater Treatment Operational Structures Series circa 9/19/2019
• Alternate Delivery of Wastewater Treatment Services Series circa 3/04/2020
• All Hands Workshop Revisions to the JPA Agreement; Review of Wastewater Operations Series circa 3/11/2022
• All Hands On Deck, Facilitated Organizational/Task Force Member Feedback Survey circa May—August 2022
• All Hands On Deck, Facilitated Workshops 5/04 and 5/18. One tentatively scheduled to follow on Thursday 6/22

Hundreds of thousands of YOUR $$$ for SOCWA staff time, member agency staff and Board time (yes, BOD get paid by their districts to attend) from 2019—2023, more for facilitators, outsourced consultants and expensive expert attorneys, and not one person in the meetings or workshops has expressed a trace, a spark or scintilla of interest in the OWM though prompted by me.

At the more recent ones I noted (5/04 & 5/18), I spoke about it at length, challenging them like the faith-based, Bible-beating preachers I see on TV. The silence was deafening. Not one comment from any agency rep or Director to my OWM exhortations, my intrinsically, altruistically inspired summons.

Sad to report too but it’s become obvious that the public aren’t really all that important, let alone a “recovering activist” like myself, held in any esteem, shown much respect. Tolerated, ambivalent maybe, but welcome? I don’t think so.

Mostly I get nods and perhaps sincere, sympathetic (poor Roger) glances. There are a few outlaws, but naming them would possibly cause them distress and ex-communication.

Maybe they’re so hesitant because they distrust enviro-advocates, or even in fear, suspicious and wary of change itself as most humans predictably are? These are very conservative, cautious people, playing with “house money” (ratepayers revenue) no less.

My NGO has never litigated any of them. Yes, we’ve filed complaints with Cal/EPA that led to subsequent compliance, modest fines, but usually better management practices or sewage spill responses are developed. We've never filed in any court.

I’m not saying that they’re shirking their personal accountability or responsibility to their customers. Many like the way SOCWA is organized and don’t feel that a 20-year-old JPA needs revisioning, refurbishing, altered charters or missions, let alone new governance structure. It’s kinda “Hey, it works for me.”

Granted myself and my NGO were extremely irreverent, confrontational and transgressional back in the late 1900s through the early 2000s. Since around 2010 we’ve actually made a concerted, focused effort to work with, not against many of these districts and SOCWA to ensure and enhance future safe, healthy water supplies. Including supporting grants in written petitions to our State and federal programs.

6 years ago, CWN tried to launch a ½ day OWM symposium hosted by SMWD, sanctioned by the San Diego Regional Water Quality Board no less (their Asst. XO Jimmy Smith was our liaison), but we were eventually told that it was too soon. That DPR wasn’t ripe, maybe by 2025, but not now.

Hey, guess what? Since these DPR facilities take 4-5 years minimum to plan, build and implement? Then IS now.

It’s not too soon to integrate, to commit to the OWM today, we’re on the precipice of being water portfolio Mr. Magoo's, slackers, so yesterday. Meanwhile, these JPA and individual district convenings go on, and on, and on. Water torture, no jive.

I will say in a close 2nd place to SMWD, SOCWA and its staff are very transparent. I’ve never had trouble procuring data or reports from them.

I can’t say that for many of its member agencies since 1998 when CWN came on the water watchdog scene, who I’ll leave out of this discussion. Suffice it to say that too often I've had to use formal, contortive public record act requests that took months when all of the data I requested was public information.

If you didn’t know it, that’s a petty form of punishment employed, for being involved, stakeholders taking part, expressing curiosity. God forbid an NGO find out anything they’d best like hidden.

(1) Governance, plus the (2) Ownership and (3) Operation of our major treatment facilities and their ocean outfalls, in dire need of not just upgrading to industry standards but modernization in anticipation of DPR (including increased volumes of concentrated briny waste discharges), are basically what’s in play at SOCWA.

One could argue that these 3 are inextricable, these Siamese Triplets, this Gordian Knot interplay has been on the table, under intense scrutiny for at least these past 4 years yet little has formally changed.

Myself and my protectionist NGO (CLEAN WATER NOW) over the years seem to be the only ones in regular attendance at SOCWA committee or BOD hybrid meetings. Over the course of the past 9 months, to my knowledge, not one other NGO has participated in ANY of them (online or in person), provided oral testimony or written input.

When those guardians who are supposedly 501 c 3 watchdogs, who brag about it and want donations, are asleep at the wheel, maybe their members should ask them where have they been? Surely not paying attention, ‘cause they’re not there. MIA.

Disengaged public stakeholders, when mated with foot-dragging officials who hold the future of reliable, sustainable, cost-effective SOC water supplies in their hands, is a bad marriage.

Thus more recently, in 2 relatively small venues, i.e., the SOCWA BOD Conference Room and the Dana Point Tennis Center, that SOC water future is under discussion in the most recent Workshop series. (see slide show)

There is a clock ticking, it’s not going to pour every year until eternity, there will be droughts and reduced natural source replenishment. Contemporaneously, we're literally wasting existing surpluses, wasting unnatural, excess water that’s out there and not supporting native ecosystems.

That’s where CWN draws the line, btw, the one reflected in our mission statement: “CLEAN WATER NOW is an innovative, science-based organization committed to solution-oriented collaboration as a means of developing safe, sustainable water supplies while preserving healthy and viable ecosystems.”

More update columns will follow, even if this latest series of workshops runs out of coal and steam, becomes like its predecessors: Futility personified and a gone dead train, R.I.P.

[1] https://uswateralliance.org/on...

[2] https://www.sandiego.gov/publi...

[3] https://www.lacitysan.org/san/...

[4]

https://www.ocgrandjury.org/pd...

Roger E. Bütow is the Founder & Executive Director of Clean Water Now

(Established in 1998)

He’s also a professional land use & regulatory compliance consultant, plus offers construction advisory services.

For more info go to his LinkedIn account: https://www.linkedin.com