Happy Belated Earth Day!

Last weekend, we celebrated Earth Day at Crescenta Valley Park in conjunction with an event hosted by Los Angeles County. It seemed particularly apropos on the heels of Mary O’Keefe’s article in last week’s issue about CVWD’s ongoing efforts to capture stormwater at CV Park. This has been a project stalled for years due to a water rights issue dating back centuries (centuries!).

Hurdling this issue with LADWP/City of Los Angeles would provide multiple common sense benefits. On one hand, we would augment water supply sustainability for our community as drought cycles intensify while supporting the County’s flood control efforts. In addition, we could significantly control costs in the face of ever-rising costs for importing water from northern California and the Colorado River, which themselves are severely impacted. As a point of reference, Metropolitan Water District, the District’s upstream source of imported water, recently finalized an 11% and 10% rate increase for this year and next year, respectively. Thankfully, this is less than the increase originally proposed.

There is a trove of smart folks in our community with a broad array of backgrounds and talents; let’s utilize that talent for savings at the tap! Tackling this issue with water rights that ultimately results in saving billions of gallons of water wasted at sea is a benefit well beyond our community. It would set a precedent for the broader SoCal region that has struggled for years with the same and similar issues. So, let’s make sure this happens!

A few days before our Earth Day event with the County, we hosted our second installment of Office Hours at the La Crescenta Library. As always, it was a great opportunity to learn and share feedback and ideas with our dedicated staff and board members. It was wonderful to meet many new faces! This time around we provided a brief presentation on our “in-house pipeline” initiative.

In-house pipeline is what it sounds like: upgrading our water mains with District staff and resources. This initiative aims to see whether we can replace a lot of our pipelines in the face of skyrocketing contractor costs. For context, the contractor portion of pipeline replacement has more than doubled in cost (more than 100%) over just the last two to three years. Our rates simply cannot keep up. We’ve issued bonds, which I firmly believe is the right choice because it makes sure we have enough money, it spreads out the cost and it ensures “intergenerational equity” as we’re not saddling this generation with last generation’s problems and tomorrow’s generation’s usage of the system.

We now have sufficient money to complete projects for the next three years, but as stewards of public funds the question still needs to be answered: “Are we doing everything we can to stretch the ratepayer’s dollar?” This is why we’re pursuing what some have called an aggressively ambitious initiative. At this point, I can’t make the promise that an in-house program will work. It is difficult, takes particular skill sets and takes extraordinary organization. But if it does work, we stand to save extraordinary amounts so we find it our obligation to try. The first project breaks ground next Monday. It will be on Fierro Circle (at the top of La Crescenta Avenue). We will keep you updated on how this, and subsequent projects, goes. Please wave a sign of gratitude at our dedicated crews if you happen to drive by.

Thank you for taking the time to read and for continuing the dialogue.

James Lee, General Manager
CV Water District