Superior Court judge rejects Urban Water Management Plan

A Sonoma County Superior Court ruling could send Sonoma County’s Urban Water Management Plan back to the drawing boards.
Judge Gary Nadler, in a suit brought against the Sonoma County Water Agency’s Urban Water Management Plan, issued a decision on Oct. 28 that the SCWA plan was inadequate.  According to his 46-page ruling, the plan failed in five respects: 1) it failed to comply with California’s Urban Water Management Planning Act (the Act) by failing to coordinate with relevant agencies; 2) it failed to meet the Act’s standard of specificity; 3) it did not adequately consider environmental factors, particularly pertaining to the Endangered Species Act; 4) it did not address the recycled groundwater in relation to the future water supply; 5) it failed to “quantify with reasonable specificity” the projections for future water demands in relation to anticipated shortfalls.
The ruling is the result of a lawsuit against the Water Agency brought by a coalition of fourteen community organizations including Sonoma County Water Coalition, Russian River Watershed Protection Committee, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, the Westside Association to Save Agriculture, the Coast Action Group, the O.W.L. Foundation, the Sebastopol Water Information Group and the North Coast Rivers Alliance, and others.
Sonoma City Manager Linda Kelly said the ruling came unexpectedly and that the City of Sonoma has not had time to perform an analysis of the implications. “We based our projections on their analysis of water delivery capacity,” she said by email, “so I would say we are a ‘secondary player’ in the overall issue of the ruling.”