KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
The Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency, a culmination of years of negotiation, litigation and, ultimately, legislation, was the focus of a celebration Tuesday at the Newhall County Water District.
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Newhall County Water officials hosted the ceremony to celebrate the passage of S.B. 634, which is known as the Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency bill, a move that the bill’s author, Scott Wilk, said was “decades in the making.”
Click here for the full text of the bill.
“In terms of having our valley’s watershed better managed, in terms of having efficiencies of scale and also allowing the (Santa Clarita) Valley to better compete with other water agencies when it comes to federal grants,” Wilk said, citing the goals of the bill.
“We save $14 million over 10 years in operating costs,” said Newhall County Water District board president Maria Gutzeit, citing the benefit of bill, “but I think it’s much more than that.”
“I think really what happened is we came to a level of realization that we all wanted the same thing and that was a better way of managing our water for our valley,” Gutzeit said. “We stopped looking at each other as opponents, and more like partners in the change.”
Both Gutzeit and Wilk mentioned the process was not quick.
“it took a while to get to that point — it ebbed and flowed, I will tell you that,” Gutzeit joked, adding “but it was nice to look across the room and see people more as partners than legal adversaries for a change.”
While Wilk’s bill was the culmination of the process, he ceded credit to the leadership of the two governing boards for making the bill possible, by coming together and agreeing to terms.
Ultimately, the move to combine agencies was supported by a vote of 14-1, with the Castaic board unanimously approving the merger and the Newhall County Water District board member Lynn Plambeck as the lone nay vote.
“I think you have to salute the board of directors for (both agencies) to realize what’s in the best interest of our ratepayers,” Wilk said, “and for them to come together after years of litigation to create this new agency.”
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How ironic to celebrate the lose of a 60 year old well-functioning district in their own expensive building that was only completed five or so years ago. Are we all proud of electing a board that instead of watching over the district and its finances, dissolved our district at the state level without even giving us a vote? Is this a celebration for the voters of this district, and the residents who paid for these facilities with their water bills over these past 60 years? No it is a funeral.
It certainly is a celebration for Newhall Ranch and Lennar/fivepoint who will now be able to grab the public’s water much more easily. And water rates are already going up, as predicted by the opposition, as announced last week.
Too bad Santa CLaritans weren’t watching this more closely. We will all suffer. The prediction by the water agencies is that no one will even notice the change. But you will notice when your rates go up and rationing starts again.
Oh, C’mon now WW – this is no surprise. The 99% of water users are now only concerned about trying to avoid Drought penalties. And those are now gone – until next year.
This isn’t a sneaky take-over of the local water systems that no one knows about. All of this last 10 years of shady dealings has been posted on-line and been available on various websites. The simple fact is that most SCV residents are too busy trying to pay rent/pay mortgages to worry about a few dollars extra to keep the water flowing through their taps.
And just to be clear – they also don’t give a f***k about how things get done, as long as it doesn’t require them to do anything about it.
That is how things get done in our world. The gamesmanship and shenanigans in Sacramento don’t matter because none of that ends up in front of the so-called electorate.
Everything is pre-cooked by the lobbyists, and those who can afford to pay them for full-time, full-court presses when the “elected” are looking for money to stay “elected”, will always win.
The People – (aka You and me) don’t matter anymore. We are always too busy trying to pay the Piper to worry about little things like this.
That is why we will always, regardless of the outcome, be surprised when the Fit hits the Shan.