The California Water Commission is hard at work coming up with various regulations for SBx7-7 – statewide water conservation required by the 2009 Comprehensive Water Package. At least, DWR staff is hard at work. At its January meeting, the CWC was briefed on Emergency Regulations for Process Water and for Agricultural Water Measurement.
Stakeholder meetings have been held this month on both urban and agricultural water conservation, or water use efficiency (Wue and AgWue). Click here to view.
For the Delta, this process comes in addition to SBx7-8, which charged the State Water Resources Control Board with monitoring water diversions in the Delta. (See last week’s Delta Flows.) Both processes overlook the unique character of Delta hydrology in the push to come up with uniform regulations.
DWR’s Economic Analysis Unit is also working on quantifying the public benefits of surface storage, assisted by CALFED’s Common Assumptions analyses of ecosystem benefits.
The CWC heard from Staff Counsel on the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act. (“Transparency is the overarching principle.”) Counsel explained that serial meetings of individual members could lead to serial concurrence, violating Bagley-Keene. Even a subcommittee becomes subject to Bagley-Keene when it involves three or more members. Counsel also advised against individual briefings of Commission members. Some Commission members appeared impatient with these constraints.