water

1. With considerable thought and expertise the Santa Cruz Water Supply Advisory
Committee (WSAC) and others have put a lot of effort into defining scenarios, criteria,
figures of merit, weights, rating scales, practice ratings, ratings, etc. in this watery n-dimensional
decision space. We are fast approaching a time when WSAC members will
be giving actual ratings to the ideas before them and will begin to eliminate some ideas
from further consideration.
However, there is a serious question as to whether the judges giving ratings yet have
anywhere near the adequate information and tools they need to do so. This question
has a profound bearing on the success of the entire WSAC mission. The widespread
belief that most WSAC members have not read all of the submissions suggests that
these members are egregiously unqualified to judge or vote in an arena where each
unread submission may contain ideas which are the saving grace of many other
submissions. Note also that these ratings are not a popularity contest; instead they are
to be science-based declarations. And the judges do not yet have the science. Several
WSAC members have said that they are not yet qualified to judge proposals until they
receive expert answers to key questions, so-called “Guidance Questions”.
EP This section outlines remedies to the situation. It contains ideas intended to
facilitate the best possible WSAC outcomes by making suggestions aimed at:
• transparency
• education of judges, both generally and about pertinent specific studies
• uniform application of criteria from one judge to another
• ensuring that it is not only projects which get evaluated, but also the many
strategies, approaches, criteria and policies submitted—which may well turn out
in the end to have been more pivotal than mere project definitions
• helping the data expand before it is collapsed, by encouraging creative synthesis,
mix & match, borrowing one author’s idea for use with another’s idea--as
opposed to starting with a narrow and sketchy field and primarily reducing the
possibilities from there
• to help ensure that what are judged are, by and large, the best versions of each
idea
• to set up a logical sequence of prerequisites, to give the participants the tools
and guidance they need to digest and process this mass of data without needing
to guess or be inconsistent
• to get the consultants going on their work:
so that the consultants won’t have to cram all of their work into a short time span,
so that there will be more time to respond to unexpected turns and do
optimizations,
so that the experts might submit ideas of their own into the evaluation process,
so that many guidance answers will become available before judges perform
ratings,
so that many answers will become available before consultants begin Real Deal
activities, and
so that their Real Deal evaluation and synthesis work will not be plagued by
guesses, restarts and repeats,
• to make it possible for WSAC to process the results and meet the City Council’s
deadline.
Consider how the above bullet points might be served by asking the experts a round of
what have been called Guidance Questions. A typical Guidance Question would

2. pertain to a fairly large group of the ideas submitted to the WSAC and would greatly
influence the “ratings” which WSAC judges would assign to aspects of the submitted
ideas. Guidance Questions are usually somewhat deep and/or technical, and often
involve a new or un-researched idea. If a judge feels that he/she does not know enough
to be able to assign a rating regarding a particular criterion, chances are the judge needs
an answer to a Guidance Question.
Allowing judges to assign ratings to submissions without first having answers to
Guidance Questions results in meaningless ratings at best, inconsistency from one
judge to the next, a huge waste of precious time, and most likely a dangerous
misdirection of the work of the WSAC as well. It is crucial for judges to be given
answers to Guidance Questions before attempting to assign ratings, as was quite
apparent in the September 26 WSAC meeting.
Guidance Questions: A Partial List
to help serve the above bullet points
1. Which projects and subprojects would fisheries regulators favor most?
2. For which of those would they not contest our water rights application?
3. For mid-County at 700-foot elevation and below, what are all of the stream sites
which hydrogeologically qualify for the installation of Ranney collectors or similar
subsurface diversion devices?
4. What would the respective yields be?
5. Damming a stream is not OK, but off-stream storage is. Of all 20-some sites where
dams are possible, for which specific ones would it be possible to relocate the
stream to connect to a stream in a neighboring canyon, and use Ranney collectors to
fill the reservoir in a fish-friendly, filtered and silt-free way?
6. What would it take to get water rights in, say, some 4 to 6 years instead of 20 years?
A. What are each of the steps in the water rights acquisition process?
B. How long does each step take?
C. What are the main reasons for each respective step taking as long as it
does?
D. What are the best remedies to shorten the duration for each respective step?
E. What are the specific changes in surface water law which would be most
helpful, and what is the probability that one or more of these might be made
in our time frame?
F. Perhaps some stakeholders would cease to impede our water rights
acquisition process if they were to receive concessions in return, such as a
stream augmentation, recharge of an aquifer, etc. What such concessions
are most likely to appear on a fairly complete list?
G. In what specific ways is a water rights application likely “rock the boat”, and
how small is that consequence compared to the benefit of acquiring a new
water right?
H. What compromises are we willing to make in order to obtain water rights?
7. What does it take to make the Tide-Over Strategy viable (i.e., making do with a suite
of temporary water sources until water rights arrive for a robust, attractive,
sustainable source)?
A. What are the items which would appear on a fairly complete list of water
source projects which could tide us over until water rights are acquired?
B. Which Tide-Over projects should we get started on right now?

3. C. Under the new groundwater law, could a proposed new mid-County
groundwater management agency provide water to Santa Cruz in a drought
without Santa Cruz undergoing a lengthy/painful water rights acquisition
process?
8. What are the respective storage capacities (“aquifer debt”) of the Purisima, Santa
Margarita and Lompico Aquifers, assuming that recharge would be accomplished by
the complete cessation of pumping from water district wells?
A. Will each 1000AFY of well cessation bring 1000AFY of aquifer debt
cancellation, and if not, how many AFY of debt cancellation will it bring?
B. Over and above serving their own needs, how much extra pumping capacity
do each aquifer’s water districts have to pump water for others during a
drought?
C. During extended droughts, would each of the three named aquifers remain as
viable water sources, or would district wells dry up to an appreciable extent?
D. What would be the annual loss from each aquifer for each 100 AF stored
there? (This is probably a function of how fully recharged each aquifer is at
the time.)
9. What does it take to pre-treat stormy river water enough to store it into Loch
Lomond?
A. How much stream water is there at each level of turbidity?
B. River water is now pumped from Felton Diversion to the Loch without
treatment. At what ntu (turbidity) level would water quality fall too low
for Loch admission?
C. What percent of San Lorenzo River water is disqualified by this ntu level?
D. On how many days per year is the ntu level higher than this level?
If possible, please produce a list containing the ntu level and flow rate for
every day of a representative normal year, at Felton Diversion (a.k.a. Big
Trees)
E. If a Ranney collector is used to filter out the turbidity, what percent of San
Lorenzo River water would then be of sufficient quality to be admitted to the
Loch?
F. For the part of the water which was filtered by the Ranney collector but was
not admissible to the Loch for quality reasons, what pre-treatment facilities
would be necessary?
G. What would be the capital cost and operating cost of such facilities?
10. What does it take for Soquel Creek Water District to exchange water with the San
Lorenzo basin?
A. If Soquel Creek Water District wanted to divert winter water from their creek,
store it the Loch, and use it all year themselves, would water rights
acquisition be any easier or quicker for them, seeing as how it is “their” water
in the first place?
B. --and if they got water rights, what pre-treatment would their water need to
get in order to be put into the Loch and not violate any regulations about
inter-basin transfer of invasive species? (i.e., is diversion using a Ranney
collector sufficient?)
C. Can their water right in the Loch be easily limited to just the amount of water
they put into the Loch in the current water year (Oct. 1 to Oct. 1), less
evaporation?
11. What does each of the neighbors say it takes to get them to cooperate in a regional
solution?

4. 12. What are the results of the studies on pumping from the Santa Margarita Aquifer in
Live Oak?
13. What are the water rights issues regarding water diversion via Ranney collectors on
streams where there are no existing water rights?
14. There are several submissions regarding new water storage facilities on the N.
Coast. What is the potential water available for storage on the N. Coast?
15. John Ricker's submission indicates that with existing infrastructure and one
additional pump station, Santa Cruz could receive 1.45 million gallons per day from
Soquel Creek Water District during a drought year. What would it take for that yield
to be safely drawn from the aquifer?