Could cracks in confederacy doom southern OC secession?

January 22, 2010, 3:00 am ·  posted by Teri Sforza, Register staff writer

civil-warThe southern confederacy does not present a unified front in O.C.’s Water War.

We told you last week that some southern rebels – who threaten to cleave the county in two and spend more than $1 million in the process - plan to hire a $49,000 consultant to prepare a “detachment application,” which could allow them to split from their northern neighbors and form their own water-importing authority, thank you very much.

But not all the southerners are on board. “The City of San Juan Capistrano is not paying for any of these consultants,”  Mayor Londres Uso told us. “We’re not sure it’s in our best interest.”

Ditto for San Clemente (and perhaps for Laguna Beach, though we didn’t hear back from LB by deadline).

One problem: Cities are struggling for money these days, while special districts are mostly doing just fine (thanks to rather enormous reserve funds, among other things).

But more important, the little cities of San Juan Cap, San Clemente and Laguna Beach  (which provide water to some 150,000 residents) would be drowned out in a new union by their enormous neighbors – the Irvine Ranch, Santa Margarita and Moulton Niguel water districts (which provide water to close to 1 million people, the vast majority of south Orange County).

The new, breakaway southern water-importer, as it is envisioned at least, would make the small cities’ role essentially obsolete. “We’d lose any kind of power,” San Juan Capistrano’s Uso said. “We’d have zero control.”

gone-with-the-windWhy? Because each entity’s vote would be based on the size of its district. Since the cities are so small in comparison to the likes of Irvine Ranch, Santa Margarita and Moulton Niguel, “we wouldn’t even have enough power to break a tie,” Uso said. “Under the present conditions, there’s no way in the world San Juan is going to willingly participate in this.”

San Clemente city manager George Scarborough said much the same by e-mail.

“Though we concur with many of the concerns raised by the South County Water Agencies and believe (the Municipal Water District of Orange County) needs to implement changes to address these concerns, we will not be participating financially in the cost of advisory service related to the proposed formation of a County Water Authority,” Scarborough wrote.

“We do look forward to MWDOC working with all the Water Agencies to implement changes to address the ongoing issues that have generated the dispute.”

AND THE DISPUTE IS … WHAT AGAIN?

The dispute is between MWDOC (presently our only importer, which buys expensive water from the mighty Metropolitan Water District of Southern California in Los Angeles), and the South County cities and water districts (which buy that expensive imported water from MWDOC, and then sell it to you).

The southerners complain that middle-man MWDOC:

  • spends too much money ($6.2 million a year, when they’d like to see $4 million);
  • is building up tremendous and unnecessary cash reserves ($4.7 million, even though it owns no complex infrastructure that would need repair or replacement);
  • and duplicates their services (such as conservation and education programs).

As important, perhaps, is this: The southerners want more muscle on the mighty MWD board in Los Angeles. Right now, MWDOC has four seats on MWD’s giant board. The southerners are part of MWDOC, but they have little say over who fills those seats, and what agendas they pursue, and how they vote. That annoys them.

So, one could say that the very reason that Irvine Ranch, Santa Margarita and Moulton Niguel want to bow out of MWDOC is the same reason that the small cities would be wary of partnering with them.

That could change, Uso said, if the Big Guys went to the Little Guys and said, “There are nine of us, and each of us would have one vote,” or some such. But he doesn’t feel that the Little Guys have been consulted much by the Big Guys. And that’s not necessarily a good harbinger for the future.

The southerners, for the record, are the cities of Laguna Beach, San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente, as well as the El Toro, Irvine Ranch, Moulton Niguel, Santa Margarita, South Coast and Trabuco Canyon water districts.

Could the big water districts secede without the little cities? Could they form their own water importer, while the cities remained part of MWDOC?

That’s one of the questions the study would answer. But Joyce  Crosthwaite, executive officer of the Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission, said the answer is probably yes. But no one has applied for separation yet, she stressed.

And perhaps there won’t be a separation. We urge all parties, again, to pull themselves together, work out their troubles and save the people of Orange County what could be millions of dollars.

More Watchdog:

 

More special districts:

 

Share this post: