Last week, Central Basin hosted a roundtable workshop to discuss the proposed revisions to the CUWCC Best Management Practices (BMPs). The workshop was the ideal place for more than 40 participants (representing 27 agencies) to get their questions answered from five members of the CUWCC Steering Committee before the December 5th vote. See the Proposed BMP Revisions here.

For those of you not up-to-speed on the upcoming BMP vote, here’s some background:

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If you have been waiting for your “final” version of the proposed changes to the BMPs to arrive in the mail, you’ll have to wait a little longer. The CUWCC said it was required to provide its voting members with a copy of revisions to BMPs 60 days prior to a vote to approve the revisions. This would have required the CUWCC to provide you with a copy of the proposed revisions around Oct 10th. Last week, the CUWCC determined the 60-day notice is a tradition, not a requirement, and that CUWCC is not required to provide a copy of the proposed revisions until just before the vote. So, with this new understanding, the CUWCC is continuing to revise the proposal. It may or may not choose to provide a strike-out version showing the changes made since the last Plenary.

Click Here to read the comment letter submitted by the IEUA this week. The letter, submitted to the CUWCC on behalf of the IEUA and its retail agencies, the Cities of Ontario and Upland, Cucamonga Valley Water District, Monte Vista Water District, and Fontana Water Company (a subsidiary of San Gabriel Valley Water Co.), recommends moving forward with the adoption of the BMP revisions as soon as possible, while outlining 5 actions for the CUWCC to take prior to the December 2008 vote.

Click here to read the draft comments released yesterday afternoon by the Metropolitan Water District on the CUWCC BMP revisions. While MWD supports the basic concept of the BMPs, they do ask for greater explanation of the “new compliance strategies and goals or targets for agencies to strive towards.”  Comment papers are due to the CUWCC Wednesday, October 1, 2008.

The CUWCC is set to vote on proposed revisions to the Memorandum of Understanding and the Best Management Practices December 2008.  With the date fast approaching, we invite Group 1 members to share their thoughts, positions or concerns on these key issues. Below, Matt Lyons from the Long Beach Water Department has this to say about the importance of participating in this statewide discussion:

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CONGRATULATIONS: the nightmarish proposal to revise BMP 3 has been replaced with one that appears reasonable

There is a new conceptual proposal for the water-loss control BMP on the table, put forward by, or acceptable in principle to Group 2 (Environmentalists), one that would require water agencies to complete the spreadsheet, “AWWA WLCC Water Audit Software” every year or two. This is really big news. The original proposal would have been a nightmare to implement.
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When Have You Spent Enough?

In Problem #1 we discussed how the leak detection “trigger” would change for the worse. In Problem #2 we discussed the lunacy of a water agency spending more money to conserve an acre-foot of “paper” water than of real water. Now we highlight the impossibility of complying with the “cost-effectiveness” standard of the proposed BMP 3.

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Upside-Down Logic: compelling water agencies to spend more money conserving ‘paper water’ than real water, requiring meter replacement program that are NOT cost-effective in the real world

If your general manager prefers spending more money to conserve “paper” water than real water, they’ll love the CUWCC staff proposal (see it here).

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Calculating Your Agency’s Leak Detection “Trigger”

Here, Matt Lyons from the Long Beach Water Department offers the first in a series of postings that will address the core problems with the CUWCC’s proposed BMP 3. He begins by providing 3 things all retail water agencies should keep in mind over the course of the BMP review process:

3 Things Retail Water Agencies Should Keep in Mind:

• AB 1420 (state law potentially denying state funds to agencies not in compliance with the BMPs) mostly applied to retail water agencies because they have the most measurable, difficult BMPs to achieve.
• Some BMPs are already too difficult for more retail water agencies to comply with; for example, more than half of the retail water agencies are out of compliance with BMP 1 (water audits) and BMP 6 (HECW Rebates), yet the proposed BMP 3 is much more challenging than either of them.
• Proposals cannot become a BMP without a majority approval from Group 1 members (water agencies).

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Last week, the first CUWCC Caucus for Southern California water agencies was held at the Long Beach Water Department. If you missed it, here is a look at the key points discussed (click Here for the full meeting notes):

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