DANA POINT : Merger Plans Could Set Off Water Wars

After years of urging by the Orange County Grand Jury, the reinvention of local government begins today in San Clemente and Dana Point as officials prepare for what could become a bitter fight over how water should be brought into the area.

The San Clemente City Council and three water-related agencies serving Dana Point will move tonight to streamline South County’s old guard districts that predate the cities themselves.

Several grand juries have long depicted these agencies and other small governmental districts in the county as obscure, inaccessible and out of touch with their constituents.

But officials say it is the current water shortage and the press for cost savings that have driven the merger moves.

“Just like businesses consolidate for more efficiency, I think we all agree that it’s time for us to consolidate,” said Jim Hayton, a director of the 46-year-old Capistrano Beach County Water District. “Water rates are skyrocketing and we are looking at another dry year. People won’t see tremendous savings immediately, but we have to take this one step at a time.”

In what is considered a happy union, the directors of the 66-year-old Capistrano Beach Sanitary District and Hayton’s water district will meet jointly tonight and are expected to agree to merge into a new district governed by a 10-member board that, over the next four years, will be reduced to five members. It is expected to be in operation by Jan. 1.

But a more hostile action is also planned, one that is not going to be readily accepted by the San Clemente-based Tri-Cities Municipal Water District. The two Capistrano Beach districts are expected to join the San Clemente City Council today in calling for the dissolution of Tri-Cities, an agency considered “redundant,” according to city and district staff reports.

The city of San Clemente and the Capistrano Beach County Water District now buy imported water from Tri-Cities, which, in turn, buys its water from the Coastal Municipal Water District. San Clemente and the Capistrano Beach district now hope to buy directly from Coastal.

“If we can remove one or two layers of administration, hopefully that will allow us to save some money,” San Clemente Mayor Scott Diehl said.

William C. Mecham, president of the Tri-Cities board, dismissed those suggestions as “small city politics” and said Tri-Cities has merger proposals of its own. Tri-Cities is preparing for the future by working with the U.S. Marines to share Camp Pendleton’s underground water supply, a move that has been praised by regional representatives, he said.

“By law, we are the only district in the area that can cross the county line and work with the Marines,” Mecham said, adding that the best way for the region to be served would be for Tri-Cities to merge with the South Coast Water District, a large Laguna Beach-based district.

Michael Dunbar, South Coast Water District’s general manager, said his board of directors is studying consolidation but has yet to take formal action. The grand jury and the Local Agency Formation Commission are also preparing merger studies due out later this year.