Item 28 - Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan

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Santa Ana 2020 Water Shortage Contingency Plan 3-18 3.9 Monitoring and Reporting Per Water Code Section 10632(a)(9), the City is required to provide a description of the monitoring and reporting requirements and procedures that have been implemented to ensure appropriate data is collected, tracked, and analyzed for purposes of monitoring customer compliance and to meet state reporting requirements. Monitoring and reporting key water use metrics is fundamental to water supply planning and management. Monitoring is also essential in times of water shortage to ensure that the response actions are achieving their intended water use reduction purposes, or if improvements or new actions need to be considered (see Section 3.10). Monitoring for customer compliance tracking is also useful in enforcement actions. Under normal water supply conditions, potable water production figures are recorded daily. Weekly and monthly reports are prepared and monitored. In addition, once the Advanced Meter Infrastructure project is complete, the City will be able to monitor the consumption of various customer classes. This data will be used to measure the effectiveness of any water shortage contingency level that may be implemented. As levels of water shortage are declared by MET, the City will follow implementation of those levels as appropriate based on the City’s risk profile provided in UWMP Chapter 6 and continue to monitor water demand levels. When MET calls for extraordinary conservation, MET’s Drought Program Officer will coordinate public information activities with the City and monitor the effectiveness of ongoing conservation programs. The City will participate in monthly member agency manager meetings with both MET and OCWD to monitor and discuss monthly water allocation charts. This will enable the City to be aware of import and groundwater use on a timely basis as a result of specific actions taken responding to the City’s WSCP. 3.10 WSCP Refinement Procedures Per Water Code Section 10632 (a)(10), the City must provide reevaluation and improvement procedures for systematically monitoring and evaluating the functionality of the water shortage contingency plan in order to ensure shortage risk tolerance is adequate and appropriate water shortage mitigation strategies are implemented as needed. The City’s WSCP is prepared and implemented as an adaptive management plan. The City will use the monitoring and reporting process defined in Section 3.9 to refine the WSCP. In addition, if certain procedural refinements or new actions are identified by City staff, or suggested by customers or other interested parties, the City will evaluate their effectiveness, incorporate them into the WSCP, and implement them quickly at the appropriate water shortage level. It is envisioned that the WSCP will be periodically re-evaluated to ensure that its shortage risk tolerance is adequate and the shortage response actions are effective and up to date based on lessons learned from implementing the WSCP. The WSCP will be revised and updated during the UWMP update cycle to incorporate updated and new information. For example, new supply augmentation actions will be added, and actions that are no longer applicable for reasons such as program expiration will be removed. However, if revisions to the WSCP are warranted before the UWMP is updated, the WSCP will be updated outside of the UWMP update cycle. In the course of preparing the Annual Assessment each year, City staff will routinely consider the functionality the overall WSCP and will prepare recommendations for the Director of Public Works if changes are found to be needed.