By Michael J. Harrington, Pam Nieberg and Nancy Price

In November 2011, a Davis water referendum successfully qualified for the ballot. If passed by the voters, the referendum would have overturned the City Council’s attempt to replace the community’s existing publicly owned ground water system with a large, expensive and privatized surface water system under a Joint Powers Authority with Woodland.

Rather than letting voters decide, the 2011 council withdrew its plan, and appointed a Water Advisory Committee to study and recommend to the council its preferred water project by type and size, timing, ecological sustainability, seasonal water availability and fair and affordable rates for all ratepayers.

The WAC has made enormous strides toward achieving its goals, despite many impediments, including lack of:

* Complete, independently verified data on the status of our existing water system;

* A cost-benefit analysis for the council’s withdrawn privatized surface water plan;

* Planning by city staff to bring current rates into compliance with California’s constitutional mandate that no ratepayer group subsidize any other ratepayer group’s water bills;

* Clarity as to ownership of Davis’ newly acquired senior and junior rights to water Sacramento River water; although Davis initially applied for these rights, some hold that they are now under the control of a third party such as the Joint Powers Authority or the city of Woodland, despite the fact no such conveyance of our water rights was ever approved by either Davis or Woodland voters;

* Confirmation by the Davis and West Sacramento city councils that West Sacramento is, in fact, willing to partner with Davis for supplying the surface water component of Davis’ conjunctive use system; and

* Accurate demographic information confirming what many current sources show as much lower population growth and water consumption in the decades ahead than outdated figures still used by city staff.

To allow time for staff and consultants to provide this missing data, and time for the City Council to get feedback from West Sacramento on the opportunity to partner with that city, the WAC recommended to the newly seated Davis City Council that it set a more realistic target date for a binding ballot measure than the prior target date of this November.

The council thus set March 5 as the target date for a special election on a conjunctive-use water system. However, the City Council nonetheless asked the WAC to continue work toward achieving a system preference prior to the council’s Aug. 21 meeting. That date was originally linked to the former council’s desire for a November election.

The council believed this would demonstrate to Woodland and West Sacramento, both prospective partners, that Davis is proceeding in good faith, and that this would enable the WAC to report to the council the status of its work in progress when the council returns from its summer recess on Aug. 21.

As important as the above steps are, we suggest there are other issues the WAC has not yet considered, but must if it is to discharge its duty to Davis residents. These issues are as vital as any technical aspect or rate structure if we are to have a water system that serves our needs and safeguards our rights, and the rights of those who come after us.

Space does not permit listing every such element needing review, but a short list of the most paramount must include:

* Human right to water. Every human has a right to safe, clean, accessible and affordable water adequate for basic human needs: consumption, cooking and sanitary purposes. Unaffordable water is inaccessible water, and denying citizens access to affordable water would prevent the true, full realization of the human right to water by Davis residents.

* Stewardship. Water is a public commons used by the living, but held in trust for all future generations. We also must not over-consume it, to the detriment of plant and animal life.

* Public control. Any proposal to privatize our water system by turning over its design, construction and operation to a profit-driven corporation seems difficult to justify, and the claim that “oversight” by city public works staff makes a privatized system “publicly run” is a serious misrepresentation. Guaranteeing a profit to a private operator for selling our own water back to us adds a layer of cost, while at the same time eliminating democratic control.

* Sustainability. The water project must fully account for the ongoing impacts of global warming and minimize adverse environmental impacts on local and regional water sources and ecosystems by scaling usage to our true needs and establishing project size in concert with conservation methods. Such mitigation of our impacts on limited water resources promotes sustainability.

* Local democracy. Thanks to the 2011 water referendum, all Davis voters won the right to decide on the choice of a water supply system specific to local needs and local budgets. In choosing the plan to place before voters, the City Council must represent the recommendations of a fully informed WAC and other concerned residents, and not an outcome gamed by politicians looking to fund their careers, lobbyists for large out-of-town landowners, conflicted consultants who are paid to tell us we need a huge system and then are given the contract to carry it out, or others who would “cut a fat hog” for personal enrichment at the expense of local ratepayers.

There are only three WAC meetings left before it gives the City Council a report on its summertime efforts. It seems beyond any realistic expectation that the WAC will receive all the data it still lacks, or be able to cover all the points it must discuss. Given the new March target date for a binding election, most reasonable people probably would agree that the WAC will be doing very well by the council’s Aug. 21 meeting if it can cover these two tasks:

* Categorically identify and task staff with providing the information the WAC must receive to make the recommendations it is charged to provide, whether that data comes from the staff, consultants or the respective city councils of Davis, Woodland and West Sacramento, or state and regional agencies; and

* Frame a new long-range calendar, built upon incremental modules per time constraints, such as the legal date to separate Davis’ water rights from co-joinment with Woodland’s, or the date by which the city must file any water measure proposed to appear on a March 5 ballot.

We believe the City Council’s stated goal of a March election is unrealistic given that this most essential of public works projects has to be designed, a full project-specific EIR published, specific rates calculated and the entire package fully explained to the public well before the long lead times established by state law for submission of ballot materials to local election offices.

Given our collective years of experience with local elections and campaigns, it is obvious to us that a fall 2013 or spring 2014 ballot will be more appropriate for a Davis electorate that demands that its elected officials take the time to get it right, and explain complex and expensive proposals to the voters. Look what happened when the former City Council attempted to ram through a poorly designed “Taj Mahal” of a project with rates that hugely exceeded the figures presented by water staff to the City Council on Sept. 6, 2011.

Obtaining and reviewing the missing data, and discussing the water plan elements that have not been covered to date — the human right to water, stewardship, sustainability and public ownership — will take time as well. The need for a thorough process trumps any arbitrarily imposed political time constraint.

We respectfully ask that the Water Advisory Committee take all the time needed to “get it right” and generate recommendations that promote the City Council placing before the voters an affordable and sustainable water supply project that will nourish us for many generations to come.

— Michael Harrington, Pam Nieberg and Nancy Price are members of the 2011 water rate referendum leadership committee. Harrington, an attorney, was a member of the Davis City Council in 2000-04.

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