Water District Question Back Before Panel

An ongoing tussle over the fate of a South County water district continues today when the Local Agency Formation Commission decides whether to reconsider its vote to give the district to San Clemente.

The decision marked the first time that a wholesale water agency was targeted for dissolution and its functions given to a city. About 16 other mergers and proposed dissolutions are pending before the commission.

The Tri-Cities district is fighting the takeover by San Clemente, arguing that a municipality shouldn’t have control over a regional water wholesaler. Instead, the district, which has about 200,000 ratepayers, has asked that it be allowed to merge with the Municipal Water District of Orange County.

The commission’s reconsideration vote was delayed last week after Tri-Cities’ attorney, Thomas Woodruff, argued that attorneys advising the commission on the issue had a conflict of interest.

The commission’s law firm, Best, Best & Krieger, also represents Capistrano Beach Water District, which lost its earlier bid to merge with Tri-Cities and, two weeks ago, filed its fourth lawsuit against Tri-Cities.

Under the dissolution plan approved by the commission, Capistrano Beach Water District would join San Clemente in assuming control over a portion of Tri-Cities’ facilities and operations.

A San Francisco attorney hired by the commission to research the conflict-of-interest question is expected to report today that different attorneys in different offices of the law firm worked on behalf of the commission and the Capistrano Beach Water District and were sufficiently separated from each other so a conflict didn’t exist.

County Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who is an attorney and the commission member who requested the legal review, said he is willing to accept the law firm’s work if the independent attorney rules that Best, Best & Krieger attorneys were properly screened from each other, as required by the code of legal ethics.

Spitzer said he is also willing to reconsider the earlier decision to give Tri-Cities to San Clemente, based on questions raised by Woodruff.

Woodruff is the attorney for the Orange County Sanitation Districts, of which Spitzer is a member. Woodruff’s partner, attorney Kennard R. Smart Jr., is attorney for the Orange County Transportation Authority, on which Spitzer also sits.

“We voted for San Clemente to be the successor agency [to Tri-Cities] because the city is the retail water provider to a great majority of their customers,” Spitzer said. “But a second look may be warranted.”

The commission’s executive officer, Dana M. Smith, did not return calls Tuesday for comment. The commission’s staff recommended San Clemente as the most cost-effective body to take over Tri-Cities, which owns a pipeline from Irvine into San Diego County. The pipeline will be controlled by a board representing the jurisdictions where it is located.