RECOMMENDATION TO COUNCIL
Staff recommends City Council hold a public hearing to review and receive comments on the Draft 2020 Urban Water Management Plan (UWMP). If found acceptable, as part of a separate agenda item, staff recommend City Council consider adoption of the UWMP and adopt a resolution including providing authorization to staff to submit the UWMP to the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) as final.
It is staff’s recommendation that this agenda item should be considered with and presented concurrently with other agenda items, specifically to conduct a public hearing to review and hear comments and consider the adoption of a Draft Water Shortage Contingency Plan (WSCP). The WSCP ultimately is included in Chapter 8 of the UWMP, but must be presented and considered separately. For this reason, the public hearing and consideration of adoption of the Draft WSCP and consideration of adoption of the Draft 2020 UWMP have been placed as separate agenda items as documented in separate Council Communications (CC).
Staff recommend ordering these items as follows:
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Public Hearing – Draft 2020 UWMP (described within this CC)
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Public Hearing – Draft WSCP (described within a separate CC)
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Adoption Hearing – Draft WSCP (described within a separate CC)
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Adoption Hearing – Draft 2020 UWMP (described within a separate CC)
Specifically these public hearings allow for 1) community input regarding the urban retail water supplier’s implementation for complying with the requirements of the California Water Code (CWC), 2) consider the economic impacts of the urban retail water supplier’s implementation plan for complying with the CWC, and 3) City provided information on their baseline values, water use targets and compliance, and implementation plan.
After the public hearing, the UWMP may be adopted as prepared or as modified after the hearing or hearings at City Council direction.
| BACKGROUND
Beginning in 1985, DWR has required water purveyors delivering water to at least 3,000 customers to prepare an UWMP and update the plan at five-year intervals. The last plan was developed and approved for 2015 and included all City boundaries as they existed at that time.
With ongoing and recent updates to the DWR Guidebook for Urban Water Suppliers, it was determined that City staff would collaborate with a consultant, Waterworks Engineers, Inc., on the development of the 2020 document update. Effort began in December 2020 with collection of significant quantity of information, continuing through a staff review process, and resulting in the proposed plan.
Following the severe drought of 2012-2016, the State of California Legislature sought to expand the water shortage contingency analysis under former law and mandated that a WSCP be adopted by suppliers. The California Water Code recognizes WSCPs as a critical tool during a drought emergency and grants that the State defer to locally adopted WSCPs, to the extent practicable.
| FISCAL IMPACT
Conservation programs are a condition of City water contracts, regional agreements, and a matter of State law with the passage of SB X7-7 in 2009. Planning continues to be done on an annual basis and is included in all rate analyses and proposed budgets.
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ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW
The proposed activity is statutorily exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). CEQA does not apply to the preparation and adoption of Urban Water Management plans (California Water Code §10652). The proposed plan would not affect water supplies for fish and wildlife, or expand or add water supplies, and therefore no further environmental review is required.
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CITY COUNCIL STRATEGIC PLAN/OVERARCHING GOALS
Goal F - Invest in well-planned infrastructure and growth
| Respectfully Submitted,
Trevor Joseph, Hydrogeologist
Richard Plecker, Environmental Utilities Director | | | 
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Dominick Casey, City Manager
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