The ball, officially, is in the City Council’s court.

At a special meeting Thursday, the Davis Water Advisory Committee voted 8-2 to recommend that the council pursue the Woodland-Davis Clean Water Agency project as the preferred option to bring a new drinking water supply to Davis, essentially spelling the end for the West Sacramento alternative.

The Woodland-Davis project would siphon water from the Sacramento River, treat it and pipe it to Davis and Woodland.

As of the most recent estimate, the project would cost about $214 million, with Davis paying about $102 million for overall construction. That price tag does not reflect ongoing operation and maintenance of the facilities.

When the water committee first began its work last fall, the project was projected to cost about $248 million, with Davis paying $125 million. But the committee determined that the original project’s capacity was too large, and concluded that it needed to produce only 30 million gallons of water per day, rather than 40.

Davis would use 12 mgd per day and Woodland would use 18.

Voting in favor of the recommendation were committee members Frank Loge, Petrea Marchand, Elaine Roberts Musser, Jerry Adler, Alf Brandt, Jim West, Steve Boschken and Bill Kopper. Dissenting were Michael Bartolic and Mark Siegler.

The West Sacramento option would have had Davis buy into that city’s existing intake structure on the Sacramento River as a customer and build a pipeline across the Yolo County Bypass to transport the treated water to Davis.

While the West Sacramento option could have been about 12.5 percent cheaper — approximately $12 million — than the Woodland-Davis project, the committee ultimately decided against it, finding it too risky.

According to Herb Niederberger, the city’s new general manager of utilities, development and operations, becoming a West Sacramento water customer would have eliminated Davis’ ability to negotiate its water rate and would have removed any ability to control rate impacts and increases.

Davis also wouldn’t have had control over whether the facilities were publicly or privately operated like it would with the Woodland-Davis project.

Finally, transferring the city’s water rights to match its point of diversion on the Sacramento River also could have taken three to six years to process.

In the end, the WAC was more confident that the Woodland-Davis project is the right fit for Davis.

But while the committee felt it could pick a project Thursday, it still wasn’t happy with the outcome of the negotiations between Davis and Woodland to redistribute each city’s share of the project costs.

In August, the WAC asked the City Council to negotiate with West Sacramento and Woodland to try to strike the best deal possible with both cities and then, based on the outcome of those meetings, the group would move forward with a decision.

Woodland’s council members, however, never appeared willing to broach the discussion of the JPA contract, at least not until Davis affirmed its commitment to the Woodland-Davis project as its preferred option.

In response Thursday, the WAC voted 7-2-1 (Loge, Marchand, Musser, Adler, West, Boschken and Kopper in favor; Bartolic and Siegler opposed; Brandt abstaining) to recommend that the Davis City Council go to mediation with Woodland city leaders to negotiate for equal cost-sharing of the treated water pipelines that convey the water to each city from the treatment facility, and for a more equitable share of the cost of the entire project, based on each city’s reliance on the infrastructure.

As Davis will use a maximum of 12 mgd and Woodland 18, the cost share percentage would be 40-60.

Niederberger and the rest of city staff, however, recommended to the committee that the cost share percentages for the entire project should remain the same except for a few aspects.

City staff believes that non-construction costs should be split 50-50 between Davis and Woodland, while any capacity-related costs of construction — including the intake facility, raw water pipelines and the regional wastewater treatment plant — would be split 40-60 in favor of Davis.

The City Council ultimately will decide how to approach negotiating for new project cost allocations.

On Tuesday, however, the council first must hammer down the wording and the type of ballot measure it will use to put the project before Davis voters in March.

The council likely will finalize that decision at its Nov. 6 meeting, just in time to send to the Yolo County Board of Supervisors for approval and the Yolo County Elections Office to prepare the spring vote.

Among other variables, the council probably will have to choose between an advisory measure and a binding measure. An advisory measure would not tie the city to the outcome of the vote, whereas a binding measure would.

Meanwhile, the Water Advisory Committee will shift its focus to the water rate structure that must accompany the surface water project. The group is scheduled to make a decision on how to fairly bill Davis’ water customers by the end of November.

— Reach Tom Sakash at [email protected] or (530) 747-8057. Follow him on Twitter @TomSakash

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