The Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency has voted to approve its Water Use Efficiency Strategic Plan, the agency’s roadmap to reducing its estimated future water usage to match state goals over the next several decades.
SCV Water board directors passed the Strategic Plan in an 8-1 vote at the agency’s regular meeting Tuesday evening. Director Kathye Armitage was the sole “no” vote.
The plan includes an analysis of the agency’s options for bringing water usage down to the state’s compliance levels — by over 10,000 acre-feet per year over the next several years — while keeping costs low, and recommends one path forward that may change the way SCV Water customers pay their water bills: tiered rates.
By combining rates personalized to household and landscape size with enhanced water loss control, incentives and other programs, the agency hopes to save 13,000 acre-feet of water by 2040.
Matthew Dickens, SCV Water’s sustainability manager, emphasized during his presentation on the plan preceding the vote Tuesday that approving the plan meant approving a long-term strategy for the agency to meet state requirements for water usage — not necessarily the tiered rate program recommended in the plan.
“There are no rate changes being adopted or approved with this plan, and future board approvals would be required for any changes, program changes or budget allocations. And this plan also calls for five-year periodic review of uptake,” Dickens said. “What is not being approved tonight is specific rate structures or rate increases, immediate budget appropriations beyond existing authority, or binding commitments.”
While three government and business associations sent statements in support of the agency’s Strategic Plan Tuesday, the Westridge Valencia Master HOA sent a letter expressing concerns about the plan reducing allowances for outdoor water use, which are set to tighten in 2035.
The plan’s target for tightening outdoor water use was the snag point for the sole public commenter at the meeting Tuesday. Rob Nakamura, representing the Westridge Valencia Master HOA, reiterated the concerns outlined in the HOA’s letter.
“I want to begin by making clear Westridge is committed to conservation, sustainability and working in partnership with SCV Water,” Nakamura said, but added that the Strategic Plan, in its current form, doesn’t fully take master planned communities with specific irrigation needs in mind.
“Westridge includes over 1,000 homes and extensive common-area landscape developed over decades. Our trees and landscapes did not develop in a natural dry land condition. They developed under long-standing irrigation patterns.”
According to the letter from Westridge sent to the board, the HOA commissioned a professional arborist to evaluate the effects of what’s estimated to be a 44% decrease in irrigation availability by 2040. The arborist concluded that reduced irrigation would likely damage or kill the primary tree species on the HOA’s property, valley oaks and coast live oaks.
Dickens said the agency has flexibility when it comes to how it’ll implement the new water budget over the next several years.
“There’s nothing to preclude you from using more water for a specific piece of land. It’s the community’s water budget. If the community wants to prioritize tree assets more in favor of … unused turf, or what’s called nonfunctional turf,” Dickens said. “We’re also in favor of (the) incorporation of more native plants … so again, there’s ways to do this in the implementation strategy that’ll incorporate the HOAs.”
Director Armitage’s request for the board to incorporate a request to create a stakeholder group with HOAs failed to crystallize before the board’s vote on the Strategic Plan.
“At this point, I would prefer to let staff come back and look at the best way to meet them, whether it’s a stakeholder meeting, or if there’s other opportunities there,” said board Vice President William Cooper.
The Strategic Plan’s big picture
The Strategic Plan, which can be viewed on SCV Water’s website, was created in response to a California regulation passed two years ago, and its goals for reducing water use are organized with deadlines set by the state in mind.
Financial penalties for being out of compliance with target water usage could begin as early as November 2027, and by 2035, the agency will have to manage the plan’s most significant reduction in outdoor water use before tightening again in 2040.
But the impetus to bring more direction to California’s water use strategy in response to climate change began in the state’s Legislature several years beforehand.
In 2018, the California Legislature passed a bill to set guidelines for efficient urban water use throughout the state, and that bill added a section to the state’s water code directing the State Water Resources Control Board, coordinating with the Department of Water Resources, to create water use and oversight standards for commercial and institutional water use.
The Water Boards passed the “Making Conservation a California Way of Life” regulation in 2024, which set annual water use objectives for the over 400 “Urban Retail Water Suppliers” in the state, a category that includes public water agencies and private utilities.
Each supplier has a unique target for water usage, based on a combination of indoor and outdoor residential water use, certain outdoor irrigation and water lost through leaks in its distribution system.
That water use target — functionally an “aggregate community water budget,” according to the SCV Water Strategic Plan — will shrink slightly over the years until stabilizing in 2040.
The agency currently meets 65,550 acre-feet of water demand; By 2040, SCV Water estimates it’ll be using 88,000 acre-feet of water with its current conservation plans in place, against the state’s 75,000 acre-feet goal.
That 13,000 acre-feet gap is exactly what the Strategic Plan is designed to close, and bring down even further over the succeeding decade: By 2050, the state’s goal for SCV Water’s water use is 60,000 acre-feet a year — a little less than current demand.
