THE DROUGHT : Casitas to Sell Water to Santa Barbara

A Ventura County water agency agreed Wednesday to ease Santa Barbara County’s drought crisis in the most complex water exchange arrangement in the state.

Casitas Municipal Water District approved a contract Wednesday to sell 7,200 acre-feet of water to Santa Barbara County, where residents of the southern coastal communities face 50% cuts in supplies. The arrangement will cause no net loss in water to Ventura County, because Santa Barbara County promised to build a pump and a pair of pipelines that will enable the city of Ventura to receive the same amount of water from the state.

This is beneficial for Ventura because state water is higher quality than Ventura’s often unpleasant-tasting supplies, officials said.

Under the agreement, Casitas will ship the water to Santa Barbara over two to four years. Casitas will then withhold a like amount of water from the supplies it normally delivers to Ventura.

Because Ventura has no connection to the state water project, Santa Barbara County will spend $2 million to install a temporary pumping station and pipelines to cross the Santa Clara River. That will connect Oxnard distribution lines with those of Ventura.

The pump and pipelines will be temporary--therefore not the same quality required of permanent facilities--and they will be removed when the last of the water is delivered.

The state water, which is drawn from Northern California rivers, will be delivered to the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles. Metropolitan will ship the water to Calleguas Municipal Water District, which supplies two-thirds of Oxnard’s water supply. Oxnard will blend the state water two parts to one with local ground water and ship the mix to Ventura through the newly installed pipelines.

“This contract is unprecedented in its complexity and the number of agencies involved,” said Phil Overeynder, Santa Barbara County’s water agency manager. During the state’s drought in 1977, Marin County arranged to have state water shipped in a temporary pipeline that stretched across the San Rafael Bridge, Overeynder said. “But there has never been anything this complex,” he said.

Residents in the Casitas Municipal Water District, which serves a third of Ventura and the Ojai Valley, worried that the good-neighbor agreement with Santa Barbara would lead to reductions in their own water supplies, already scarce after four consecutive years of drought.

But Casitas officials sought Wednesday to dispel that belief.

“There’s no net water loss to the district,” Casitas General Manager John Johnson said. “The water will come in before we deliver any to Santa Barbara.”

The plan requires final approval from all agencies involved, and Overeynder said he expects agreements in the next two weeks.

The water will cost Santa Barbara County about $1,800 per acre-foot, about five times the cost most municipalities pay for their water, Overeynder said.

“That’s the value of the water when you have no other sources,” he said.

Overeynder said the pump and pipelines should be built in time for state water to reach Ventura this winter. Under the agreement, no water may be shipped to Santa Barbara until the water begins arriving in Ventura.

Overeynder said he and officials from the other agencies discussed whether the pump and pipes should be installed permanently. But he said that would increase the costs drastically and delay the project at a time when Santa Barbara County is desperate.

“The time frame was the overriding consideration,” he said.