5th District Candidates Respond to Water/Wastewater Questionnaire
By Brenda Adelman
(This is the first in a two part series that will explore the candidates’ positions on some important West County water and wastewater issues. This month’s article summarizes candidate responses on water issues and March’s article will complete the review, critique responses, and make recommendations.) Our goal is to provide information as objectively as possible to help voters decide whom they want as 5th District Supervisor.
Last month Russian River Watershed Protection Committee developed two pages of complex questions concerning Fifth District surface water and wastewater issues. We sent copies of the questionnaire to seven active candidates including Rue Furch, Maddy Hirshfield, Tom Lynch, Dan Kahane, Jim Maresca, Guy Smith, and Eddie Alvarez. But for Eddie, who had had a death in the family and could not make it, these were the same people who took part in the January candidate’s forum in Sebastopol. All but Guy Smith committed to answering the questions by the due date of Feb. 6th, but Jim and Eddie did not follow through. (Thanks to the four who did respond. We know it was a major effort on your part and we are grateful that you took the time.)
The questions centered on a few main topics: water supply and the low flow issue, Santa Rosa’s wastewater, pollution problems from “incidental” irrigation runoff, and West County wastewater and geological issues. There was also a question on citizen advisory committees and the public participation process. Because of a special tool in MS Word, we were easily able to note the number of words utilized by each respondent, indicating to some extent the amount of effort they expended and/or the amount of knowledge they possessed about the topic. The exact count went as follows: Maddy (5177), Rue (3532), Tom (2209), and Dan (1874). We realize the number of words does not always guarantee the quality of the responses, but we thought it was worthy of note.
The first question had numerous parts and generated disparate responses, partly because of its complexity. To simplify here, we had asked candidates to name several ways that summer flows could be preserved for recreation, while still protecting the fish during the migration season. Here are their responses in abbreviated form.
Maddy: Emphasizes conservation and wastewater reuse to offset potable use, while protecting from runoff contamination of our waterways. Would work to prohibit gravel mining in the river (terrace mining too?). Will encourage mandatory re-use standards in new development. Will look at surface water and groundwater as part of the same resource and manage both as part of the same system (i.e., determine how they affect and interact with one another), including development of a comprehensive resource management plan. Maddy also enumerated several other possible water conservation solutions and would work to stop illegal diversions. She does not support a permanent change to lower flows because she believes that it is a way to avoid other means of cutting diversions and excessive water use, and is an unfair burden to those who live and work downstream. Furthermore, during draught years, there is already a means in place to lower flows and therefore further changes are unnecessary.
Rue: Supports the State’s identifying and curtailing upstream illegal water diversions using aerial photography in order to enforce current permits. Supports increasing on-site agricultural storage ponds to capture high winter storm flows. She wants to improve setback standards to improve aquifer recharge. Would work with federal and state agencies to create enforceable regulations and mitigations that protect the tourist industry and the fish and would work to make sure the mitigations are funded. Rue believes that more can be done to increase water conservation in the cities, rural and agricultural areas. She does not believe that “low flow” is a permanent solution and does not support changing the base summer flows as identified in Decision 1610 without first examining and possibly revising all the underlying assumptions upon which it is based.
Tom: Enforce laws while working with landowners to reduce and codify surface water diversions. Reuse wastewater mindfully to reduce drawdown of potable supplies. Increase conservation through reduced home use, xeroscaping, grey water re-use, smart toilets with different buttons for “pee and poop”, smart technology to monitor all indoor water and energy use, drip and nighttime irrigation, riparian restoration to increase streamside canopy to reduce evaporation. Tom says the bottom line is that “fish are more important than summertime recreation” yet then goes on to say that the Sonoma County Water Agency disregards the environment and downstream economic interests. Believes that diversions need to be better controlled and there should be no codification (change of Decision 1610) of reduced summer flows. Believes that “normal” flows should be retained except during dry years because of increased sedimentation.
Dan: Feels the problem is with short-sighted management decisions that cause long-term problems. “We depleted our fish resources so that now we are limited in our choices of how to remedy the situation.” “Diversions are a critical party of our water supply and transmission system. I am not aware of a viable plan for providing water to 600,000 people with the diversions that allow the Water Agency to maintain the water supply.” Dan believes that illegal diversions should be handled by Fish and Game and the DA’s office. He goes on to state, “As of April 18, I will take an unpaid leave-of-absence from my position as a Water Programs Specialist for SCWA so that I may speak without conflict-of-interest regarding more sensitive issues in and around water supply both now, and into the future.” Dan believes that the river is healing as a result of outstanding fisheries biology and state-of-the-art restoration ecology throughout the river system. He believes that summertime flows between 75 cfs and 95 cfs appear to work for fish and recreationists alike.” (Summer flows in a normal year now average about 200 cfs.)
There are more comparisons to be made, but we have run out of space for this article. If you would like to see the questionnaire and all responses, please send a request to rrwpc-1@comcast.net Next month we will report further on other responses, review our impressions and hopefully provide an endorsement based on these comments.