ISJ Work Online Friday August 2, 2013

At the August 1 meeting of the Los Osos Community Services District, it was great news to hear that the very, very, very, very tardy ISJ work would become public on the LOCSD website August 2, sometime during the day. The Executive Summary and the Draft Basin Plan will be posted there, copies will go to the library and CDs will be available for check-out at the LOCSD office (remember, there are new office hours). The link to the site is here:

http://www.losososcsd.org/cm/Home.html

There will be sixty days of public review and a TBA presentation of the plan. All comments on the plan must be in writing, but it isn't clear to me just where these comments are to go.

How is this "sewer project information?" WATER! No dirty water, no sewer, but that is hardly the case here in LO. OK, it is a condition of the Coastal Commission permit for the project that there be a "Basin Plan."

This 2011 staff report gives a good overview, here is a cut'n'paste:

Los Osos Wastewater Project 

March 2011 Status Update

EXHIBIT “B”

UPDATES ON THE BASIN MANAGEMENT PLAN, THE HABITAT CONSERVATION PLAN AND THE LOCAL COASTAL PLAN

Los Osos Groundwater Basin Management Plan

Efforts to reach a settlement under existing groundwater litigation are proceeding under the Interlocutory Stipulated Judgement (ISJ) process to develop a basin management plan to balance the basin for existing and build-out demand. The ISJ group, which consists of the County and the three community water purveyors (Golden State Water Company, Los Osos CSD, and S&T Mutual Water Company), released a basin update in May 2010, which includes the following:

• Estimates of the safe yield of the basin water supply were updated in 2009. The current demand, from all users, is theoretically within the safe yield according to Basin modeling. However, under the model the water purveyors need to redistribute their well pumping between the upper and lower aquifers and from west to east in order to balance the basin, and the model results need to be confirmed for actual Basin conditions.
• Recent monitoring has found that the rate of seawater intrusion has accelerated following three years of drought, particularly through advance “fingers”. 
• A peer review has found that the technical groundwater analysis and modeling provides usable results and can reasonably be used to implement a Basin Management Plan, provided there is ongoing monitoring and analysis. 
• The Los Osos Wastewater Project will include several actions that benefit the water supply in the community and be complementary to other basin management actions currently being considered.
• The water purveyors, through the ISJ efforts, are investigating many potential actions to incorporate into the Basin Management Plan in order to balance the basin and stop seawater intrusion.

The ISJ group intends to release a draft Basin Management Plan within the next few weeks. As stated in the May update, the overall basin yield is within the current demand and planned wastewater actions will provide additional benefit to the water supply through conservation and reuse. The result will be some additional supply for new development and, while not yet certain, it is hopeful that through the planning process and careful allocation of water resources there will be sufficient supply to meet build-out demand for the community.

Also useful to understanding how all the water measures fit into the big water puzzle is this document, The Water Conservation Implementation Plan for the Los Osos Wastewater Project.

Having done a bit of snooping, I found this link which suggested that there will be a "water market" and a "watermaster."