The San Diego County Water Authority Board of Directors today voted unanimously to appoint Dan Denham as general manager, following the retirement of former General Manager Sandra L. Kerl in June. Denham has served in several leadership capacities with the Water Authority for the past 17 years, including his most recent post as deputy general manager.
August 24, 2023 – The San Diego County Water Authority Board of Directors today voted unanimously to appoint Dan Denham as general manager, following the retirement of former General Manager Sandra L. Kerl in June.
Denham has served in several leadership capacities with the Water Authority for the past 17 years, including his most recent post as deputy general manager. In that role, he oversaw the MWD and Colorado River programs, along with the Engineering, Water Resources, and Operations & Maintenance departments. Denham also continues to oversee the implementation of long-term agricultural-to-urban conserved water transfers that are among the largest in the United States. As a commissioner on the Quantification Settlement Agreement Joint Powers Authority, he leads the Water Authority’s fulfillment of environmental mitigation obligations and legislative advocacy efforts at the Salton Sea.
“We are fortunate to have Dan’s knowledge of the San Diego County Water Authority and his depth of experience managing multiple programs, including the landmark agreements that have ensured a safe and reliable water supply for San Diego County,” said Mel Katz, chair of the Water Authority Board. “We look forward to working closely with Dan to ensure the Water Authority’s continued success serving our vibrant region.”
As general manager, Denham’s priorities include continuing to enhance relations with the Water Authority’s member agencies, minimizing rate increases, concluding the long-running litigation with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and ensuring long-term water supplies for the semi-arid San Diego region.
“I’m thankful for the opportunity to lead this agency and build on the many achievements of my predecessors, my colleagues, and generations of leaders on our Board,” said Denham. “It’s clear there are few easy answers to some of our generational challenges like water reliability – but there never has been. Thankfully, San Diego County can work from a position of strength based on our investments in supplies and conservation over the past 30 years.”
San Diego County Water Authority General Manager Dan Denham. Photo; San Diego County Water Authority
Before joining the Water Authority in 2006, Denham served in various capacities at the City of San Diego’s Metropolitan Wastewater Department, Financial Management Department and Mayor’s Office. Denham holds undergraduate degrees in public administration and economics, and a graduate degree in public administration — all from San Diego State University. Denham sits on several regional boards, including the North San Diego Business Chamber, the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, the San Diego State University Alumni Board, and the Citizens Forum of the U.S. Section of the International Boundary & Water Commission.
The General Manager’s Office manages and directs the activities of approximately 250 Water Authority staff. The office implements the Board’s Strategic Plan and policies through programs in the Business Plan; oversees the Water Authority’s extensive infrastructure system; communicates and advocates policy positions and programs of the Water Authority to local, state, and federal officials and agencies; and supports the Board of Directors.
In an “unprecedented” move, the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) is suing a local commission for approving the decision to allow two north county water districts to seek water elsewhere.
The San Diego County Water Authority filed a lawsuit Monday over the proposed departure of two North County water agencies, which the water authority alleges will raise water rates for other county residents.
The lawsuit challenges a decision from the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission to allow the Rainbow Municipal Water District and Fallbrook Public Utility District to leave the water authority and join a water agency in Riverside County.
The San Diego County Water Authority filed suit Monday to stop the rural Fallbrook and Rainbow water districts from leaving the county system, citing environmental harm under the California Environmental Quality Act.
The lawsuit filed in Superior Court challenges a decision by the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission to allow the two districts to join Riverside County without paying what the Water Authority says is their fair share of water-reliability investments.
The “detachment” effort is the first of its kind in California and would shift approximately $140 million in costs to the rest of the Water Authority’s customers.
The San Diego County Water Authority filed a lawsuit Monday over the proposed departure of two North County water agencies, which the water authority alleges will raise water rates for other county residents.
The lawsuit challenges a decision from the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission to allow the Rainbow Municipal Water District and Fallbrook Public Utility District to leave the Water Authority.
The San Diego County Water Authority is spending $100,000 from a state grant for a summer public outreach and educational advertising campaign to promote wider adoption of sustainable landscapes that are more suitable for the region’s Mediterranean climate.
A SDCWA statement said its “Thanks for Planting Me!” campaign offers gratitude to the hundreds of thousands of San Diegans who are using water efficiently, along with encouragement to expand regenerative, low-water landscapes.
The San Diego County Water Authority today filed suit against the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO, to protect the environment and to stop an imminent and illegal rate increase from harming farmers, working families, small businesses, and other water ratepayers across San Diego County.
I got some pushback recently on the idea that legislation which could stall the breakup of the San Diego County Water Authority may have trouble getting through. But it’s hardly a guaranteed success for the city of San Diego and its sponsor, Democrat Tasha Boerner from Encinitas. It needs a two-thirds vote from the state Legislature and there’s evidence that – despite strong support from labor unions – Democrats may not have all the votes they need.
Litigation aims to protect ratepayers from ‘LAFCO tax’ while seeking out-of-court settlement
August 21, 2023 – The San Diego County Water Authority today filed suit against the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO, to protect the environment and to stop an imminent and illegal rate increase from harming farmers, working families, small businesses, and other water ratepayers across San Diego County.
The lawsuit challenges the decision by San Diego LAFCO to allow two local water agencies to leave the Water Authority without paying their fair share of costs incurred on their behalf over the past few decades. The “detachment” effort is the first of its kind in California, and it would shift approximately $140 million in costs from the Fallbrook and Rainbow water agencies to residents and businesses in the rest of the Water Authority’s service area over the next decade, raising water rates across the county as soon as January 2024.
According to the lawsuit, LAFCO failed to comply with several laws, including the County Water Authority Act, the Metropolitan Water District Act, the Cortese-Knox-Hertzberg Local Government Reorganization Act of 2000, and the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. During the three-year process of detachment – also called “reorganization” – the Water Authority raised numerous substantive concerns about LAFCO’s approach and methods; however, LAFCO disregarded critical problems to reach its pre-determined goal of approving detachment.
“Litigation is a last resort, but LAFCO’s deeply flawed decision leaves us with no choice but to stand up for residents, businesses and the environment,” said Water Authority Board Chair Mel Katz, adding that LAFCO denied a request by the Water Authority to extend a key litigation deadline to accommodate settlement talks. “Even though we were forced to file this lawsuit, we have had several good-faith discussions with Fallbrook and Rainbow, and we look forward to continued talks in hopes of finding a mutually agreeable resolution outside the court process.”
The Water Authority’s lawsuit asserts that LAFCO failed to assess and/or address significant detachment-driven negative impacts to:
“LAFCO should have acted as a backstop to protect the region’s ratepayers from this misguided and outdated attempt by these agencies to secure cheaper water without regard to the loss of reliability to their ratepayers and at the expense of the entirety of the Water Authority, i.e., its other 22 members, its constituents, and the region as a whole,” according to the suit, filed in San Diego County Superior Court.
“Yet, LAFCO’s approach to this seismic shift in regional water supply planning was, at once, both slapdash and pre-determined, with many ‘invented’ processes and little attention paid to staff impartiality, the relevant statutory requirements, the need to disclose and analyze the environmental impacts under CEQA, or Rainbow and Fallbrook’s responsibility for their fair share of existing indebtedness the Water Authority incurred to serve their customers.”
Over the past 30 years, the Water Authority has created one of the most extensive, drought-resilient water supply systems in the nation based on regional demands to ensure water supply reliability for an arid region with few local natural water supplies. The effort worked, providing sufficient supplies across the Water Authority service area during a serious drought in 2020-22. It also came at the cost of a few billion dollars over the past three decades – investments approved by the Water Authority’s Board of Directors over the years with the understanding that each member agency would use and pay for its share of the supplies and facilities over the long-term.
LAFCO’s approval of the Fallbrook and Rainbow detachment applications in July 2023 included an arbitrary exit fee for the two districts. That LAFCO-designed fee fell $140 million short of covering the two agency’s costs over just the first decade of detachment even by LAFCO’s own flawed methodology based on years-old data and questionable projections.
“LAFCO staff reverse-engineered an exit fee that would impose the least possible economic burden on Fallbrook and Rainbow, ignoring the guidance provided by its own expert and relying on stale data and projections, despite the availability of updated revenue figures that could have been used in calculating the fee,” the lawsuit said. “Despite prior Commission discussion and the public discourse about the need for more data and options, LAFCO approved the Resolutions that adopted staff’s arbitrary number for exit fees without any substantial evidence or legal support.”
The detachment approval by LAFCO was also flawed in that it denied voters across the San Diego region the opportunity to vote on the proposal, in violation of state law. The disenfranchisement of more than 3 million residents showed “a clear intent by LAFCO to interfere with the constitutional right of voters to be heard on the imposition of the ‘LAFCO tax’,” according to the suit.
In addition, the Water Authority’s lawsuit argues that detachment creates a major change in water supply sources for Fallbrook and Rainbow that would cause significant adverse impacts on the environmentally degraded Bay-Delta by increasing water demands on that resource. According to the suit, “CEQA requires LAFCO to conduct an adequate environmental review prior to making any formal decision regarding projects subject to the Act. LAFCO failed to do so before approving the Resolutions, in violation of CEQA.”
To read the lawsuit, go to www.sdcwa.org/member-agencies/lafco-reorganization/.
