BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE AGRICULTURE & WATER RESOURCES COMMITTEE
Senator Jim Costa, Chairman
BILL NO: AB 901 HEARING: 6/19/01
AUTHOR: Daucher FISCAL: Yes
VERSION: 4/16/01 CONSULTANT: Brent
Walthall
Water supply planning
BACKGROUND AND EXISTING LAW
Existing law requires urban water suppliers to prepare and adopt
an Urban Water Management Plan (Plan). The Plan must be updated
every five years. For the purposes of this section of the Water
Code, a water supplier is a public or private water supplier
that provides municipal water to more than 3,000 customers, or
supplies more than 3,000 acre-feet of water annually.
Urban Water Management Plans must include a variety of
information such as: (1) water supply availability during
average, single-dry, and multiple-dry water years; (2) the water
supplier's demand management practices such as water
conservation and recycling; and (3) quantification of existing
and planned sources of supply available to the water supplier
for the ensuing 20 years. The overall intent of the Plan is to
fully describe the water suppliers' demands for water and how
they match up with the water supplier's available water
supplies.
Urban water suppliers must update the Plan every five years and
must coordinate the Plan with other "appropriate" agencies
including other water suppliers that share a common source, and
other "relevant" public agencies.
PROPOSED LAW
This bill would require urban water suppliers to include
information in the Plan on the effect of water quality on the
water supplier's existing sources of water.
COMMENTS
1. Urban Water Management Plans are an effective tool for water
agencies to periodically assess their water supplies and the
ability of those supplies to meet existing and projected
demands. However, existing law does not require the Plan to
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include the impacts of water quality on supply. Because
water supplies can become unusable as a result of certain
water quality impacts, it is important that the Plans
identify the potential effects of water quality on water
supply availability. This bill makes that information a
required component of the Plan.
2. Under existing law, water agencies are required to include
certain topics in their Urban Water Management Plans.
However, they are not prohibited from including additional
information that is not required by statute. Water quality
information is of primary interest to urban water agencies
that provide drinking water and those agencies are free to
include that information under existing law. This bill is
not required to allow urban water agencies to include water
quality in their Urban Water management Plans.
PRIOR ACTIONS
Assembly Water, Parks, and Wildlife15-0
Assembly Appropriations 20-0
Assembly Floor 75-0
SUPPORT
American Planning Association
Association of California Water Agencies
Consulting Engineers and Land Surveyors of California
East Bay Municipal Utility District
Irvine Ranch Water District
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
OPPOSITION
None received.