ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Shaking the Status Quo on Water

The sound management of water resources is a fundamental issue that goes to the heart of Orange County’s future.

For 23 years, grand juries have been recommending consolidations in water districts; now the jury has weighed in with a provocative recommendation that nine independent water districts be merged into two larger agencies.

A recommendation for consolidation at the wholesale level would be unsurprising, but a suggestion for merger of retail districts that sell the water directly to households and businesses appears already to have stirred controversy.

Even the president of the Irvine Ranch water board--which was the suggested managing umbrella district for five others in South County, and might be thought to benefit--said he was not sure that the consolidation of the retail districts was really necessary.

The grand jury spent six months on the study and is to be credited with tackling a subject that has resisted resolution all these years. What the jury has produced is a good start, and we should hope that consolidation will not be debated for another 23 years before decisions are made one way or the other. The recommendations have gone to the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission, which is charged with taking action.

The grand jury report says that consumers pay too much for water, but it does not say how much is too much, and it does not suggest how much water rates would decrease by taking the action recommended. The public needs these answers. Obviously, it would be desirable to supply water at rates that are more advantageous for homeowners and businesses. But while efficiency is desirable in the abstract, these savings need to be spelled out.

Water management ultimately should be about the public interest, but in the reality of the political world, it is also about the preservation of turf.

A case must be made that it is worth giving up the sense of “local government” that individual retail districts provide in return for bigger districts that demonstrably would save money.