Water Archives · Dave Orth interview

Title

eng Dave Orth interview

Description

eng Former general manager of the Westlands Water District and former general manager of the Kings River Conservation District.

Creator

eng Orth, Dave

eng Holyoke, Thomas

Relation

eng Water Archive Oral Histories

Coverage

eng California State University, Fresno

Date

eng 6/29/2015

Format

eng Microsoft Word 2013 document, 18 pages

Identifier

eng SCMS_waoh_00028

extracted text

>> Thomas Holyoke: So today we are interviewing David Orth, who right now is
general manager of the Kings River Conservation District, but I think we'll
start a little further back in time than that. So let's just start by
telling us a little bit about who you are and where you're from. Maybe your
education, first job, that sort of thing?
>> Dave Orth: Okay, great. I'm actually a native of San Joaquin Valley, born
and raised in Porterville, just south of here; and came to Fresno State in
the early 70's to pursue an accounting degree, actually graduated in 1979
with a Bachelor of Science degree with an accounting option. My out of the
box job was to be an internal auditor for the county of Fresno, and at the
time I thought internal auditing was where I was going to die. Did a lot of
interesting work running around and seeing how various county departments
are operated in auditing, about their internal financial processes, and
really enjoyed that tremendously; and then in the early 80's, was asked to
serve as the deputy treasurer for the county of Fresno and learned that
there was a lot more to life than auditing. And did some short term and long
term capital finance, managed a couple of critical investment portfolios for
the county and started to round out that financial experience that
ultimately led to my hiring at Westlands Water District in 1986 to serve as
their director of finance.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Who hired you at Westlands? Who was the general manager
then?
>> Dave Orth: The general manger in 1986 was a man by the name of Jerry
Butchert, he's now deceased, but an incredible manager, and very blessed on
my part to have been able to serve under him because Jerry started very
early after my arrival to shape me into some of the policy arenas that,
looking back were critical, and kind of my career to get to where I am
today. Jerry, it was not uncommon for Jerry Butchert to come into my office
as the finance director, he being an engineer, and say, "I want you to work
on finishing the distribution system." And I would look at him and say,
"Well that's an engineering job, and he'd just smile and say, that's why I
want you to work on it." He wanted us to really spread our wings and get
involved in things that were outside of our comfort zone and that was
critical I think and - are key in my development in the California water
arena.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So you learned most of what you know about water from
Jerry?
>> Dave Orth: I would say in large part. Certainly the first 14 years of my
career were first as the finance director, and then ultimately as the
general manager of Westlands, from 1995 to 2000, and Jerry was a fixture,
even after he retired and I filled his position. Somebody that I could look
back to and talk about issues, Jerry was very good about taking me around
California and introducing me to his network, and a lot of California water
issues are relationship based, and so I was fortunate to have that
introduction. So yeah, I'd say he played a big part in what I know.
>> Thomas Holyoke: For better or for worse, Westlands has always been a bit
of a lightning rod in California water politics. What do you remember going
on in Westlands in the 80's?
>> Dave Orth: Well I came in, in September of 1986, and this was just a few
months after the closing of the San Luis drain, and the threats from the

department of interior to terminate all surface water deliveries to
Westlands because of failed drainage service; and this all, you know, in
part was brought to a head by the deformities of wildlife at the Kesterson
Wildlife Refuge. All of that was in play in the early - in 1986, and so when
I came on board, very quickly got involved in looking at drainage service
alternatives, studying how we were going to address the significant
financial burden that the federal government had accumulated, and dealing
both with the cleanup of Kesterson as well as examining long-term
alternative drainage solutions. So in the, you know, 1986 to '88 timeframe,
it wasn't so much about water supply scarcity, it was about how do we deal
with drainage service? How do we deal with long-term drainage solutions? And
we spent a lot of time looking at a lot of different ways to deal with it.
Here we are in 2015 and we still haven't figured out how to solve that
drainage service question as a state, but that was a key part of what was
going on. It was later in the 90's where water scarcity started to get in started to become a significant issue.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So back in the 1980's, with the federal government,
potentially looking to shut off water service deliveries because of the
drainage problem inhabited Kesterson, was that a time when Westlands - with
the district and its growers were doubting their own future?
>> Dave Orth: You know, I would say that for a very short period of time in
1986, just right about the closing of the drain and the threat to terminate
water service, that there was significant fear and uncertainty about what
the future looked like. And I think Westlands did a pretty remarkable job in
that time period and the ensuing months and year or two to really engage in
looking at solutions and to create a higher degree of confidence of a
future. But certainly for a few months there was a lot of questioning about
how are we going to survive if we don't have drainage service, and more
importantly if the federal government does in fact go through with their
threat to terminate water deliveries, then the district goes back to its
groundwater dependency days.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you remember at all how Jerry ended up dealing with
all this?
>> Dave Orth: Jerry was a pretty collaborative type of manager, and he
worked a lot on developing relationships. He and his management team of
which I was part of spent a lot of time in Sacramento and in Washington DC
and actually in Denver with the Bureau of Reclamation, talking through
alternatives. We also spent a lot of time in the field with our growers, we
had very regular, what we called water customer workshops, and would explain
pretty openly what we were doing to look at different types of drainage
solutions. So a lot of open collaboration and discussion. Of course there
was always this part of Westlands that involved evaluating the legal action,
and so in addition to the external conversations, Jerry also led the board
of directors through discussions of legal alternatives and strategies to
deal with both legislative, federal legislative, or even litigation that was
aimed at trying to create some certainty and stability for the district.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Now, so you were also - had been at Westlands around the
time that endangered species became an issue up in the delta, then '92 when
CVPIA came out.
>> Dave Orth: Yes, I was still the finance director in 1992, but very much
aware of what CVPIA proposed and ultimately did in terms of water supply

reliability. I think the intent, looking back then was to try to create some
stability, some certainty, in how the federal export operations were going
to function and kind of a general sense that if we gave up a little bit of
water, we could create certainty with respect to how the balance of that
water supply would be made available. That is not proven to be true by any
stretch of the imagination, but those were equally trying times and trying
to understand how if the federal project took away this large block of water
and dedicated it to fishery, how that was going to effect the district's
surface water supplies. There was, back in that period of time, you know,
the creation, post CVPIA of the Bay Delta Accord, and the CALFED processes
that really started these multi-agency collaborative discussions about how
do we deal with this change in the way we're managing our surface water and
how do we deal with the uncertainty of the endangered species act. And
again, bits of progress in those arenas, but certainly haven't solved our
problem.
>> Thomas Holyoke: When CVPIA was passed in '92 and, sorry to hear that
800,000 acre-feet at least was going to be held back, and was there a - did
anyone quite realize at the time in Westlands that this was going to begin
an unending period of high water unreliability?
>> Dave Orth: I really don't think that with the passage of CVPIA that there
was a sense of the beginning of a reduction, I think a lot of people at the
time felt that, okay, we've lost a large chunk of water, but we'll be able
to manage through that by developing other water supplies, by becoming
active in the water transfer market. And these were venues that when I was
manager, we were very much focused on, during the 1995 to 2000 timeframe, so
I think initially that the emphasis was more on development of replacement
supplies, hoping that perhaps part of that 800,000 acre-feet could be
operated for multiple benefit. That we could create fishery benefit, but
then somehow bring it back through the system to create a secondary
irrigation supply. It's been over time that I think people now can look back
with clarity and saw that - and see that that was really the beginning, that
we've continued to see just a series of reductions in water supply
reliability, in large part because of endangered species issues, and some of
the very things that CVPIA purported to try to fix.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So you became general manger in '95, were you surprised
to suddenly be considered for that? Was that something you had wanted?
>> Dave Orth: It was an interesting time for the district, because Jerry
Butchert would bring his senior management team together once a month, day
after our board meetings, we'd have a breakfast and go around the room and
talk about things we were working on and share with each other. Just kind of
how life was treating us, it was very informal, very fun, very social, but
had a - clearly a team building and strategic purpose; and somewhere along
that few months before he left, which would have probably been late 1994,
Jerry shared at one of these breakfasts that he was going to retire. And
that immediately started what I now call "silly season," because there were
a number of us in the district who were senior managers who felt that we
were able - qualified to fill that seat. I was a little bit circumspect, and
kind of held back announcing, and - immediately, my intention, but as time
evolved over the ensuing months, and it was about 5 or 6 months between his
announcement and his departure, I started to recognize that key issues for
the district at that point in time were financial stability. We had water
rates, water costs to the growers that were spiking at very high percentage
rates. We had an organizational structure that really needed to be re-

evaluated and aligned with the purpose of the district at that point in
time; and I went to the board and pitched, "I can be your general manager if
you let me start with a business plan. Let me start with implementing this
vision organizationally and financially for the district. I can't fill the
policy space that Jerry filled." And was very honest with them about that.
It was a long shot, I really felt that if you look at the history of
Westlands, they've typically hired people who were very strong in federal
policy and federal lobbying, who have very large presences with the federal
government and the congress. I didn't have that ability, other than a little
bit of exposure that Jerry had given me. So yeah, I guess I was a bit
surprised when they ultimately selected me. They very quickly got behind me
and allowed me to fulfill the business plan objectives that I had suggested
needed to be dealt with, and then they, the board, worked pretty rapidly to
give me the policy support that I needed to succeed.
>> Thomas Holyoke: You mentioned that this was a time when the rates that
they were paying for water were spiking, did Westlands have firm contracts
with the Bureau of Reclamation at that point in time? I know it was an issue
for Westlands for a long time >> Dave Orth: Yeah, the district's base surface water entitlement with the
federal government was for 1.15 million acre-feet per year. That was a
combination of two different contracts for two parts of the district; and
then they also had what was called an interim water supply contract for
another - up to 250,000 acre-feet. And so up to and prior to CVPIA, there
was a substantial amount of surface water that you could spread operating
costs across. And as that tightened up, as the water supply reliability
started to be reduced, first the interim supply contract dried up and became
fairly evident that it wasn't going to come back, and the reliability of the
base supply of 1.15 million acre-feet started to reduce, we had a lot less
quantity of water to spread operating costs across. The initial response
was, we'll just raise rates. We'll just keep raising rates, and pretty soon
we started carving some of those rates off and putting them onto a per-acre
standby charge. So now, all of a sudden growers were paying not only a land
based charge, but a water delivery charge as well, and it just - it was a
time where we had to take a hard look at the water supply that we really
expected to have, and then wrap a budget around that, rather than continuing
to assume that we were going to get that full supply.,
>> Thomas Holyoke: Actually, just step back to drainage for a moment. All
this time, hadn't Westlands growers also been charged for the building of
the drainage system that never actually was completed?
>> Dave Orth: That is correct. Their federal pricing policy is a very
complex topic, but every one of the water rates paid by a grower, whether
they were, depending on what rate category they were in, included a drainage
service fee. It ranged from as low as 50 cents per acre-foot under a fixed
contract approach to costs for operation and maintenance and even capital
repayment of the San Luis drain and the Kesterson cleanup costs actually
were ultimately folded into that repayment obligation. So there - yes, there
is a significant amount, even to today, that was Westlands' growers are
paying for drainage related facilities and service that they have not yet
achieved.
>> Thomas Holyoke: That can't go down terribly well with growers [laughs].
Okay, in the - earlier you mentioned the Bay Delta Accords, which were from
'94 I think?

>> Dave Orth: I think it was '94, yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay, and actually, did you sort of say what those were?
Explain what those were?
>> Dave Orth: Well, the Bay Delta Accord was this process where the upstream
and exporter interests came together around this Sacramento San Joaquin
River Delta, which is the center of the hub of moving water around
California. We came together, we also brought the federal and state agencies
in and started some discussion about how do we create operational certainty.
The CVPIA, certainly within 2 years, demonstrated that it wasn't going to
create that stability that we felt we needed. That the endangered species
issues and the operational issues in the delta for salinity management,
water quality related issues, were still going to trump any type of
operational certainty that we wanted, or that we needed. And so we brought
the water agencies together with the state and federal agencies together and
started talking about, can we reach agreement on how we will operate the bay
delta, and there was ultimately an agreement. We always had these little
pithy mission statements, I think it was getting better together was one of
the initial ones; and it could have been bay delta time, or the time of the
Bay Delta Accord. That ultimately then led to an agreement between the state
and the federal agencies to create the CALFED process, and CALFED began to
then examine what types of operational programmatic changes do we need to
make and what kind of infrastructure investment do we need to make to create
more certainty in the face of this rapidly growing conflict or tension
between endangered species and water quality objectives, and the operational
- the export supply reliability that we needed in Westlands.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Were you deeply involved in CALFED? Yourself or the
district?
>> Dave Orth: The district was heavily involved in CALFED. CALFED was one of
those things where you could get buried and lost, to be honest, it was a
very comprehensive process that had lots of tentacles to look at a lot of
different components or variables to delta water supply reliability and
habitat enhancement. I was involved in a little bit of that, I was also
trying to manage a district and implement a new business plan, so we had
staff who were involved in trying to monitor and provide input in where we
felt the priorities needed to be.
>> Thomas Holyoke: It's my impression that CALFED today is remembered as,
well, as a failure. What happened to it?
>> Dave Orth: I would agree that, you know, we spent probably the better
part of a decade and easily over $1 billion between the state and the
federal investment and the local investment, to try to create something out
of it which we didn't achieve. Frankly, there were probably some minimal
program components or tweaks that provided some very short-term
opportunistic relief, but CALFED never came forward with the solution. What
CALFED has done, which remains to be seen, whether or not it’s part of a
successful future is that identified a number of surface storage
opportunities in the state of California, examined well over 100 different
surface storage projects, and those were screened down to now what the
California Water Commission defines is the CALFED record of decision
projects. So there was a record of decision laid out, all these options, and
we have 5 projects in the state that are identified as potential expansions

of surface storage supply that are - that may or may not get built,
depending on how we structure the funding around them. But short of that,
there wasn't a very large infrastructure fix that came out of CALFED.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Was CALFED an opportunity to sort of sit down with
guests' interests, other than adversarial to Westlands. Like many of the
environmental organizations, where they part of CALFED or involved with
that?
>> Dave Orth: Yeah, the processes around CALFED included virtually anybody
who had a stake in water, so we had, you know, the large environmental
advocacy groups, NRDC, Environmental Defense, that would come into the room
and sit around and talk with the water export contractors and the water
project operators about water issues, were trying to find that point of
agreement. We also had some more localized investment involvement, land
owners and representatives from within the delta that are still very active
today in discussing what our long-term solutions are for the way we move
water around California. So there was a very strong stakeholder process in
that - yes.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Let's see, what else from that time? I was supposed to
ask you something about - something called area of origin filing.
>> Dave Orth: In 2000, Westlands Water District filed an area of origin
application against the San Joaquin River system, and area of origin
basically is a concept that from a layman, from a policy perspective, lawyer
will give you much different answer, essentially says that if you're in an
area that has been historically served or capable of being served by a
waters from a watershed, that you can make a claim that you're within the
area of origin and should have a priority to any other downstream uses of
that water supply. Westlands in 2000 was severely water constrained, they
could see the future with some clarity, that the surface water supply
reliability was only going to get tighter and tighter, and we were in the
midst of doing land retirement, acquiring land to downsize the demand of the
district, and the board ultimately decided that they needed to try to
establish through legal processes a more reliable surface water supply. So
they filed an area of origin claim. The claim, as I recall, was filed in
August of 2000, and August of 2000 was when David Orth left Westlands Water
District. That was not a model that I felt fit where I wanted to be as a
manager. I wanted to work on collaborative solutions to work cooperatively
to develop programs and projects and infrastructure that would help all
interests get better. Maybe I did believe in that getting better together
concept, and an area of origin claim just drew the battle lines. It
separated everybody into their respective corners and really kind of set
everybody on their heels for several years before that ultimately was
settled away.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did other people see this as, kind of a Westlands water
grab?
>> Dave Orth: I think it was kind of the return to the old Westlands
approach of fighting for everything they could possibly get, and I can't
blame them. The district needed to take the actions necessary to protect its
land owners, but a lot of folks felt like it was reverting to the old
Westlands style and really kind of undermining a little bit of the
collaborative process that we had - our collaborative ground that we had
covered in the '95 to 2000 timeframe.

>> Thomas Holyoke: So in the '95 to 2000 timeframe, was that - those, I
imagine were the years when Westlands first really started to feel the pinch
on water.
>> Dave Orth: It was being able to look, you know, post CVPIA, post Bay
Delta Accord, and seeing that we still had significant problems in exposure
to very unreliable water - surface water supplies. Again, primarily in the
impacts and influences that would restrict how the delta export pumps would
be operated. So absolutely I can recall many, many instances where I as the
manager and a legal team would go into what we called retreat mode, and we'd
close the doors and we'd spend full days, if not strings of full days,
talking about what are we going to do? How do we deal with this water supply
uncertainty and scarcity? And that involved everything from developing
additional water market strategies, pursuing supplies that might be
available from districts or private sellers in areas where we thought there
was abundance surface water supply; but it also involved some of these legal
strategies that included the area of origin claim.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. Anything else form the Westlands years we need to
discuss?
>> Dave Orth: I don't think so, no.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. Alright, so in 2000, you leave Westlands Water
District, and where do you go?
>> Dave Orth: Well that's kind of interesting, I actually went into private
sector employment for about 20 months. One of the very large land owners in
Westlands Water District, the Jack Woolf family, called and offered me,
called and offered me an opportunity to work with them, and at the time I
thought, you know, gee, this is kind of interesting, I've always been a
public agency employee, I've always done finance and policy, this company
wants me to bring that expertise and assist them in developing and enhancing
water supply at the farm level, rather than the district level. Maybe I can
do that. And so I was able to work with them to not only manage their water
supplies and to do water transfers and try to enhance some of their surface
water supply reliability, but also manage their energy portfolio. They had a
very elaborate groundwater pumping system across the ranch, about 26,000
acres as I recall, and a big chunk of that groundwater engine was fueled by
natural gas, and so I got involved in acquiring the natural gas to support
that demand as well as natural gas for one of their vertically integrated
facilities there, tomato paste processing facility. So I learned very
quickly about managing natural gas, in a very volatile period of time if you
look back to the California natural gas market in 2000-2001, we saw
unprecedented spiking in natural gas and energy prices. And then I also
worked with them to evaluate and look at some on-farm interim surface
storage regulating reservoir facilities, did a couple of studies there about
how we might be able to build a storage project that would serve the ranch,
rather than, you know, the region or the district. Unfortunately the whole
economy - and kind of downspin there that happened in the 2000-2001 period
limited our ability to do any kind of really significant water
infrastructure development.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Was Woolf Farms also having trouble obtaining enough
water at that point in time?

>> Dave Orth: Yeah, the - a large part of the Woolf land holding were in
what was called Area 2 of Westlands Water District, which is that area up to
the west, kind of between I-5 and the borders of the Sierra Foothill, or the
coastal range. Incredibly productive land, prime spot, anywhere in the world
I believe, to grow almonds and pistachios, and so a lot of permanent crop
development going on up there with the limited water supply. And so a lot of
what I did was involved in, or focused on trying to enhance that limited
surface water supply with groundwater assets or transfers from other
parties, both within the district and from other areas of California to
bring supply and to support that investment.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Was that easy to do?
>> Dave Orth: Wasn't terribly easy, but we were still generally in
California, and even within Westlands, and in a place where there were
willing sellers of surface water supply at fairly affordable rates. The
ranch also had a pretty reliable groundwater supply at the time, we felt,
and so we were able to really kind of manage the available groundwater
assets with whatever Westlands gave us with the surface water entitlement
with market transfers and supplemental activities to really balance things
out. I don't recall a lot of land fallowing that went on in that time
period, even with water scarcity, we were able to make the water assets
needed to support the annual business plan.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Okay. And you were only with them for 20 months - what
happened there and where did you go to?
>> Dave Orth: Well, somewhere along that way, in addition to a very
significant personal event, it became pretty clear to me that I liked
policy. I really felt that my strength has been in leadership, especially in
the public agency arena, and really feeling that I could establish a
meaningful presence in the policy discussion that was very clear California
was going to play out. It so happened in January of 2002, that all these
things kind of merged together, it was that restlessness, that desire to get
back into policy. An opportunity, frankly, to leave the country for about 8
weeks to go adopt a little girl that my wife and I had decided we wanted to
do, and so we spent almost 2 months in the Ukraine and brought a little girl
home who's now beautifully 17 years old; and then the opportunity to go to
work for Kings River Conservation District. The district, previous general
manager, Jeff Tailor, had announced his retirement, and the district had
gone through an executive search that culminated in my selection in January,
February of 2002. And it was an exciting time for me, not only because the
family had grown, but also to get back into policy, and I had - to be
honest, kind of initially dismissed KRCD as an opportunity or as an option
for my future, but the more I talked to the board and the more I understood
what they were looking for, I felt it was going to be a great fit.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Kings River Conservation District, what is it?
>> Dave Orth: KRCD is a special-act agency that state legislature created in
the early 50's. It's got a very interesting story that starts with a debate
between the Bureau of Reclamation, the Federal Bureau of Reclamation and the
US Army Core of Engineers, over the proposed construction of the Pine Flat
Dam; and there was a debate that went across President Roosevelt's desk
several times, the memorandum are out there in the record, where each agency
was making its case as to who should own and operate the dam. Ultimately,
the president's compromise was to let the core of engineers build the damn

for primarily flood control, but to give the US Bureau of Reclamation the
responsibility to negotiate with the local downstream water rights holders
for the storage, the irrigation benefit, the new storage component that came
along with that dam. Bureau of Reclamation came out and looked at 28 water
rights holders, and mutual water companies and local water districts, and a
myriad of other districts who had been formed in anticipation of something
happening, and said, "We can't negotiate with all these agencies, we want
one," and out of that, some water agencies and land owners in the Upper
Kings Watershed organized and created this special piece of legislation. The
initial purpose was to negotiate with the federal government to get the
storage benefits behind the dam. We succeeded in doing that and assigned
those storage rights to the water rights holders in the middle to late 60's
and really became a district without a purpose. But again, in somewhat
visionary form, the act gave the district such a broad set of powers, and
one of the broadest set of water related resource management powers in the
state, I believe. And so the district had position to ultimately become the
local flood project sponsor for the federally constructed Kings River Flood
Project. We were given opportunity to create energy. I think the initial
focus was to convert water to energy through hydro power and the district
does own and operate hydro power plant on the face of Pine Flat Dam, to this
day. We also subsequently leveraged that into a second gas fired power plant
that we owned from 2002 to 2015, and we have done a lot of groundwater
management and water quality work and even coordinated with some of the
local communities in the region on an integrated planning process to look at
actions that, you know, when integrated and connected, can achieve multiple
benefits like dealing with groundwater overdraft, enhancing drinking water
quality, managing flood project water differently. So the district, you know
- the vision back in the 1950's, when the act was passed to create the
district, I don't think had any idea that we were going to be doing what we
do today, but it certainly set forth the opportunity to go in a lot of
different areas in water resource management.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Was the original enactment language flexible enough to
allow you to do that, did you need to have it amended?
>> Dave Orth: It was very flexible from the very beginning. We have - I
don't believe done any significant modification to the act, for management
authorities. I think it's key to point out that the district has very
limited powers. We have a broad array of opportunities to work
collaboratively with the other local governments in the watershed to achieve
these resource management objectives, so what we've done over time, is
position ourselves to be an implementing agency to carry forward a program
or a vision or an objective that becomes important to the region. So no, the
act hasn't been amended to my knowledge in any way, shape or form, to
advance that goal.
>> Thomas Holyoke: How was an organization like this funded?
>> Dave Orth: The district has a number of revenue sources, kind of our twobase and most significant revenue sources are a portion of the county ad
valorem property tax. There's a special district allocation and we were
given a share of the Fresno, Kings, and Tulare County property taxes for the
lands that we overly in those three counties. We also have a power benefit
generation component for the energy we generate at Pine Flat Dam, through
the generation - the hydro generation plant. And that, on an average year,
will bring somewhere around $1.5 million to $1.7 million to enhance our
budget. What we've done over time is added to that with accumulation of

financial reserves, so interest earnings, grant revenues. We do a lot of
grant processing and have a grant component for the administration of those
monies. To kind of leverage this all up to about a $15 million a year
operating budget.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you interface a lot at all with the Kings River Water
Usage Association?
>> Dave Orth: We actually share the building with the Kings River Water
Association. That association represents the 28 water rights holders on the
Kings River. They have a much smaller staff than KRCD does. Kings River
Conservation District has a staff about 55, the water association has a
staff of 3, or 4. So a lot of the work we do is to assist them and their
members in dealing with some of the water management related activities. We
do everything from staffing and assisting, review of legislation, and
establishing positions on water related legislation that potentially affects
us. We do a lot of work with them on groundwater recharge and groundwater
management. Both as an entity and then with their individual members.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Now it was recommended that I actually ask you about
groundwater management, or groundwater integrated management. Apparently
you've had a lot of experience with this.
>> Dave Orth: Well, yes. I guess two things to cover there, one in 2002,
when I got to KRCD, the state legislature had just passed a bill that called
for the creation of integrated regional water management plans. The idea if
we go back to the CALFED discussion was that we needed to create more
regional reliability and independence from the delta, so that these areas
south of the delta weren't as dependent upon the delta as they've
historically been. And the carrot in that act was that if you ever wanted
state grant funds to assist you in making local infrastructure or program
investment, you had to have an integrated regional water management plan. So
the leadership on the Kings, primarily through the management of the Fresno
Irrigation District, the Consolidated Irrigation District and the Alta
Irrigation District, joined with KRCD to develop an initial process to
develop an initial integrated regional water management plan. The idea in
the legislature is you bring every stakeholder, public and private, who has
an interest in water management into a room and talk about and create a
common vision, and we did that, from 2002 to 2006, about a 4 year process,
with a great deal with state support. We had a very collaborative discussion
with representatives from local communities, the counties, the fishing
interests, the Audubon Society, native plant species society. Ultimately,
today we have 53 or 54 entities participating in this planning process, and
we've invested, developed I guess, over $100 million worth of projects using
about $50 million worth of state money and then matching it with local
revenues to do anything from groundwater recharge to metering. Part of the
investments that have been made were to assist the city of Fresno in
metering their residential deliveries. We've done some wildlife and habitat
development along the Kings River corridor. So very collaborative and
successful process here locally. The core to that whole vision for the
integrated plan in the Kings Basin is to deal with groundwater overdraft,
and so the mission was to basically identify the overdraft and then
implement projects that eliminate that overdraft by a targeted date in the
plan of 2032; and we've made significant advance along that objective. We
still need to spend quite a bit of money and take a lot of additional
actions to get to that objective, but it's been a very successful program.

>> Thomas Holyoke: When you started doing this, was there a serious
overdraft problem in the Kings River watershed?
>> Dave Orth: There was, the Kings Basin, much like most of the San Joaquin
Valley groundwater basins are in serious overdraft. In the Kings Basin, it's
a function of growth as we've seen population demanding - population
increase, we've seen crop shifts that have created a more significant and
hardened demand on the groundwater resource. Of course we've cycled through
a drought or two that have caused us to really pull down groundwater and
storage in those long periods of below normal precip. And we've also seen
around us a lot of significant things happen. The San Joaquin River
restoration, up the San Joaquin, moved water that typically seeped into the
east side of the Kings Basin and recharged our area, started moving up the
San Joaquin River and up to the delta. We've seen Westlands, who is
immediately downslope of us to the west, go deeper into their groundwater
resource, and all of those asset - all of those actions together have
created a pretty significant overdraft for the region, and we're not immune.
We've estimate our annual average overdraft to be, for the basin, about
900,000 acres, somewhere between 140,000 and 150,000 acre-feet a year.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Has it been hard getting all of your stakeholders to sort
of agree on a management plan for groundwater?
>> Dave Orth: Not as difficult as I thought. The interesting discussion
initially was one of trust, and it was - wasn't so much unwillingness to
agree on a problem, I think everybody agreed on the problem, the trust was
how would we work together to implement solutions that were for a greater
good. And there was a lot of concern from the environmental and the
environmental justice community about how the water districts were going to
position themselves, and was this really going to work. And so the
relationship part of this became more important than the problem
recognition. We were able to accomplish that again with a great deal of help
from the state of California, and building on some of our previous successes
in some other areas to create that local community trust. And, again,
invested a large amount of money in expanding our recharge capacity and
managing some of our demand to get to that goal.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Has there been significant recharge?
>> Dave Orth: There has been. We estimate that all told our projects have
created about 20,000 acre-foot of additional recharge capacity per year. And
in years of abundance when we have flood releases coming off the system, off
the Kings River, we're doing a lot to fill that capacity and recharge. We
are presently working on expanding recharge, both through dedicated recharge
basins as well as motivating farmers to take some, what we call, on farm
flood water. Through the acquisition of easements, and all of that's aimed
at trying to capture that flood release when it's available on the Kings and
keep it in the system for groundwater recharge, rather than let it leave the
basin and flow out to the delta.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The regulations at the state, starting to lay out as of
last year on groundwater management, does that affect the way you do
business now?
>> Dave Orth: The passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in
2014, is going to significantly change the way local agencies manage
groundwater. I was asked by the Brown administration and the association of

California water agencies to negotiate that final package of legislation and
spent a lot of 2014 in taking ideas and concepts from the local level up to
Sacramento and trying to implement those within the legislative process. I
think the act does some interesting things. First of all, it preserves the
ability of local water agencies to manage groundwater, which was an
objective of ours. We have a pretty solid history in California of local
agency management of groundwater, although one would argue that perhaps with
continued long-term overdraft we haven't managed as much as we've monitored.
But we've preserved the ability of local agencies to be part of the longterm solution. We asked for connectivity to the land use planning process,
and the act now requires groundwater management planning agencies to look at
general plans and general land use plans that are created by our cities; and
counties have to look at the groundwater plans that are being prepared by
their neighboring water districts and try to create connectivity. We also
define sustainability, because historically, groundwater management in
California was aimed at the locals decide what they think they need to do to
manage the groundwater, but there was never a limit on, or an objective
defined in statute as to what the expected outcome should be. And so the act
says the local agencies ultimately have to manage groundwater to avoid
significant and unreasonable overdraft or reductions in groundwater or
degradation of water quality, or significant subsidence events or reduction
in surface flows. So again, the act defines a lot more clearly what we in
the management of groundwater are going to have to achieve. It also creates
the stick, if you will, and that if local agencies fail to implement these
sustainable groundwater management plans and strategies, the state water
resources control board, who controls and licenses and permits the surface
water use in California, now has an opportunity through this act to come in
and control, manage and license the use of groundwater. How they do that is
a big question. The legality of all of this is apt to be challenged. There
are many people in California who believe that the ultimate solution in
these over-drafted areas is to adjudicate the basin and to create
adjudications of groundwater pumping rights through a court process, or
through some type of a landowner settlement. I'm hopeful that we can avoid
that, I'm more focused on local agencies working with the pumpers to come up
with long-term sustainable strategies to balance our groundwater basin
against our regional uses and the available surface water supply we have.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The issue of maintaining local agency control over
groundwater, is that something you had to fight for with the legislature?
>> Dave Orth: We did have to fight to keep local control. There was a pretty
strong dynamic in early 2014, led both by people within Governor Brown's
administration and certain legislators that the feeling was that the local
agencies had failed. All of this overdraft was a function of local agency
failure. There was not a significant acknowledgement that a lot of that
failure should be pointed back to the federal and state government who
haven't really created reliable surface water delivery systems and forced us
to go into our groundwater to maintain newer economies in the region. But
both members in the Brown administration and legislators wanted to wipe the
slate clean and let the State Water Resources Control Board come in
establish pumping levels in over-drafted basins. We were able to turn that
around, we were able to really explain what local agencies had been doing,
and fortunately again in the Kings, in large part because of our integrated
regional water management planning process, we were able to go up and show
data and collaborative processes and, in terms of governance and programs
and project successes that demonstrated a commitment to address the problem,
and many agencies in California were at that level and engaged and

convinced. You know, the legislators ultimately that the local agencies were
the right way to manage groundwater.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Did you have to then try to turn around and try to sell
this program to everybody back here at home? After all, most people were
used to being able to pump groundwater unrestricted.
>> Dave Orth: Yeah, there's still not a great deal of support across all
bases for the act. There's still a large outcry that landowners have a
certain right to use groundwater and one of the challenges in California is
for us to define that right. The right is not what many landowners believe
it to be, when they believe that its, they can pump whatever they need to
beneficially use on the crop that they're trying to grow, or the purpose
that they're pumping for. That isn't the right, the right is a correlative
right or a, you get to pump your share of the safe yield. And so a lot of
education’s going to have to take place going forward on what the right is.
There was a great deal of opposition and outcry, all the way to the
governors signing of this bill, into law in September 2014, even from my own
constituency. My board sent me to Sacramento in early 2014 to work on the
bill, but the last week of the session, as we were still trying to work out
deficiencies in the bill, they went to an oppose the bill position. And that
was primarily just a sense that we needed to spend more time to make the
bill better, and ultimately didn't succeed in doing that. I think there's a
lot of process going forwards that's going to involve local agency
discussion with stakeholders to help them understand what the risks are and
what the opportunities are, and hopefully to get them around sustainable
solutions, rather than litigated outcomes, but when we start talking about
property rights, it gets pretty dicey.
>> Thomas Holyoke: It's been about half a year later, does it look like the
state is going to implement this well?
>> Dave Orth: I think yeah, the state is pushing pretty hard. The department
of water resources has a signed responsibility under the act to prepare
rules and regulations for implementation of certain components, of both
definition of basins and then the components of a plan that meet the
conditions of the act. And department of water resources is very active
right now in developing those regulations and has committed to meeting the
deadlines, and I - everything that I've seen, they will meet them. The State
Water Resources Control Board, which is the enforcement arm, if people
failure, has already created its police force. They've already bought the
radar guns, they've already bought the staff, they're training them up,
they're doing some forecasting and modelling for where they think the
greatest risks are; and I think they're ready to move in if local agencies
stall, delay or fail to move.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So they're expecting it to happen. They're expecting that
they're going to have to come and take over some places.
>> Dave Orth: I think so. They say they don't, they say they don't want to
do it, but again, if you look at the resource that's being invested through
the current budget - governor's budget, they are anticipating that they are
going to have to help. Fortunately, in the Valley, a lot of local agencies
are spending tremendous amount of time to create first the governance
structure and then to begin talking about planning solutions. So I think
there's great momentum at the local level. It can potentially get derailed
by the growers, by the pumpers, but thus far, there's excellent

collaboration this early out of the box in trying to develop local
solutions.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Maybe fear of state takeover might be a motivator.
>> Dave Orth: Yeah, I think that that's the key here is recognizing that we
have the ability to keep the state out of our hair, but we have to perform,
and that's kind of a difference in this act versus prior acts. In prior
acts, you could adopt a plan, if you didn't implement it, oh well. Now, you
can adopt a plan, but if you don't implement it, you have state intervention
and impact on your local economy.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Let's talk about the, assuming we've covered this enough,
talk about the California Water Commission. I guess we'll start off with,
what's that?
>> Dave Orth: The California Water Commission is an entity that was created
by statute initially to provide guidance to the director of the department,
California Department of Water Resources in the operation of the State Water
Project; and it's been in existence since the '50's. It consists of 7
positions appointed by the governor, representing various interests, and
historically has been a place where operation of the State Water Project is
reviewed and discussed. It's also a place where requests for federal
assistance, financial assistance were brought and then the commission would
go back to Washington DC and lobby for allocation of federal money to
support California water system. It's also an entity that as the Department
Of Water Resources was charged, is occasionally charged with developing
rules and regulations, the commission was responsible, is responsible to
review those regulations in a public forum and then approve them. Nobody
really cared about the commission for a long, long time, and in fact, it was
defunct for the better part of the decade. And then in 2009, with the
comprehensive water package at the time that included a number of
components, but a proposed water bond, with a chapter of funding for surface
storage, the Water Commission was rejuvenated. And what the act did in 2009
was say this pot of money for storage development in California will be made
available to the Water Commission to decide how to fund the public benefit
portions of these proposed surface water projects. No legislative
involvement, the commission is accountable to the public, and itself. And so
with the passage of the 2014 Water Bond, proposition one, that obviously
took 5 years from legislative action to voter approval of that act >> Thomas Holyoke: And much reduced in the meantime.
>> Dave Orth: And reduced from an initial $3 billion to now $2.7 billion for
the storage chapter, the commission's - one of its principle purposes is to
establish the process by which we will evaluate project proposals, consider
the public benefits they provide, and then determine how we're going to fund
those public benefits. The law's pretty clear in that we can only fund the
public benefit part of a project, and it cannot exceed 50% of total project
cost. So the idea is that people who want to build large surface storage
reservoirs like Temperance Flats on the San Joaquin River, have to bring at
least 50% of project financing from other sources, federal government or
local users, and then the commission, based on the public benefits that that
project would provide, can provide up to, or can fund up to the remaining
50% of the project.

>> Thomas Holyoke: Now, explore a little bit more why the California Water
Commission was basically brought back into existence, to be responsible for
this money? Why didn't the legislature decide to handle that itself, and why
didn't it just hand it over - responsibility over to DWR. I mean, why bring
back this commission?
>> Dave Orth: There's - in short, I think the water user community more than
anybody felt that we needed to separate the storage funding decisions from
the legislature. California has a long history at this point in time, of
making - approving large quantities of money through general obligation
bonds to advance the development of water supply, and go back to 2002, I
believe with Prop 13, we've had since then Prop 50 and Prop 84 and now Prop
1, all allocating money for expanding our water resource, and yet there's
never been an investment in a surface storage facility in any of those
previous bonds. So the water user community felt like if we leave this in
the hands of the legislature, it gets and continues to be politicized, and
we may not ever seen an investment in a water project - a storage project.
So the deal that was cut in 2009 and then carried forward into the 2014
package was that the commission could be this independent body that's not as
politically motivated, other than it's appointed by the governor, to
independently look at and assist these projects and make the funding
decisions.
>> Thomas Holyoke: The membership of the commission is regionally based?
>> Dave Orth: No, it's not regionally based as much as it is expertise
based, I think. If you look at the act, it calls for people with water
experience and engineering experience and legal experience. I would say over
time, the emphasis on skill, has kind of been replaced with one of
experience in your area of interest, and so we have a pretty broad array of
representation. There's a grower landowner, who's currently the vice chair.
The chairman, Joe Burn is a water attorney, with a very strong presence in
Southern California. Of course, I represent the Central Valley. The recent
appointment added a second cent - or a third Central Valley representative
from the environmental justice community, a woman by the name of Maria
Herrera. And so it's somewhat regional, but it's also looking at areas of
expertise and kind of the area that you work in and the group that you
represent. The stakeholders you represent to try to make sure that we have a
kind of broad coverage as possible.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Do you know how you were brought to the governor's
attention?
>> Dave Orth: I'm speculating how I was brought to the governor's attention.
In 2012 and 2013, I was asked to co-chair a governor's drinking water
stakeholder group, to bring together the state agencies and some of the key
local agencies to look at the barriers to safe and affordable drinking water
to some of our Valley disadvantaged communities. And I worked for about two
years with some of the lead state agencies, and cabinet secretaries, and
their staff to look at what's preventing us from getting safe drinking water
to many of these communities who are struggling with water quality, and now
supply issues, relative to their groundwater. It was at the termination of
that process in late '13 I believe, that very shortly thereafter I got a
call from the governor's office asking if I'd be willing to sit on the
commission. I think that combined with just now, you know, 29 years of doing
this type of work. At one point in time as the finance director of
Westlands, I was recognized as a federal repayment policy expert, so I

understand finances and benefits of public projects. I think all of those
things kind of came together to at least cause the governor to look at and
offer me the opportunity.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Much earlier in our discussion, you'd mentioned that five
of the projects that were approved by CALFED in the CALFED record of
decision, I think as you said, are the ones that you're considering now on
the commission? Is it just those five that the commission can choose from?
>> Dave Orth: It is not just those five. The water bond identified a number
of eligible projects that the commission can fund, and there's several
categories. The first category are the five CALFED record of decision
projects which include enlargement of Shasta Dam, although it's now been
excluded for different reasons. Temperance Flat, or additional storage on
the San Joaquin River. The sites reservoir in Sacramento Valley, expansion
of Los Vicarios, in the delta, which is a facility that serves the Contra
Costa area. There's also other categories which include local surface
storage, as well as groundwater recharge, so groundwater recharge projects,
and finally reservoir reoperation projects, where you decide that you're
going to operate an existing storage facility differently, and in doing so
you create both a water supply benefit as well as these other public
benefits that the act identifies. So the trick here for the commission is to
look at every one of these project proposals and figure out which ones
provide the greatest public benefit, and which ones provide the greatest
improvement to the operation of the state's water system, which is another
criteria defined in the act; and then fund them as they are matched with
other local and federal monies to get them constructed.
>> Thomas Holyoke: And - the commission gets final say on this? Or can the
governor decide, "Oh, I don't like the decision?"
>> Dave Orth: The act gives the commission final say. The political reality
is that every one of the commissioners is appointed by the governor. Now we
do survive the governor's term if our terms last longer than the governor's
term. But I think it's appropriate to acknowledge who appointed me. And the
interests that I think I will have in his opinion on what matters. And I
feel that most of the commissioners are in that same place. But I think we
also recognize that we have a duty, we have a responsibility and authority
that's been granted upon - granted to us by the California voters and the
legislature, and I'm hoping we can find that place where our decisions align
with where the Brown administration would like us to be.
>> Thomas Holyoke: So amongst the commissioners, there has to be a lot of, I
suppose, discussion and negotiation over what kind of projects you would be
doing, and be approving.
>> Dave Orth: Yeah, at this point, there's a lot process discussion. I think
there's also, perhaps one of the most significant things that the commission
has discussed in the last several months is the concept of integration. And
what we're encouraging regions to do is rather than set up a dynamic where
we get a dozen different groundwater and surface water proposals out of the
San Joaquin Valley, and they compete against each other for a limited pot of
money, because frankly, $2.7 billion will not go as far as the state needs
in storage development. We'd rather see some of these Valley interests start
looking at, how do we integrate say Temperance Flat with some Valley floor
groundwater recharge with perhaps even some in delta habitat restoration to
accomplish a full suite of benefits. That's been the prime discussion right

now amongst the commissioners is, what does that look like and how do we
promote that vision to the local agencies and the stakeholders in the state
so that really they can bring to us collaborative solutions, not competitive
choices. That the commission has not yet really determined where it thinks
these investments need to be made. I think, and I - to date, there's not
been a lot of negotiation amongst us regarding this project versus that
project, it's more a state-wide vision and how we knit all this together.
>> Thomas Holyoke: It does seem that Valley interests have made some of
their opinions clear, wanting more surface storage. Is there a deadline when
these decision have to be made?
>> Dave Orth: Yeah, the act required - prohibits the commission from funding
any money out of Chapter 8 of Prop 1 before December of 2016. So we're on
target right now to finish the draft regulations by the end of this year.
There's then a, up to a full year of administrative office of administrative
law policy review of these proposed regulations, and then the issuance of
the final regulations and then the solicitation of project proposals. The
current calendar and the commission's concerned about it, doesn't have us
really making hard decisions until the spring of 2017. We'd actually like to
move that up to closer to the December '16 statutory deadline or first
funding opportunity, but there's a whole lot of process that has to take
place here between now and then.
>> Thomas Holyoke: It's late June, 2015, do you think we're handing our
extreme drought well, in terms of water management?
>> Dave Orth: it's hard to imagine what else we could be doing, in the face
of this drought. And I think one of the things I've been telling people is
the drought is California's reality. We're experiencing one, we've
experienced them in the past, we can be certain we will experience more into
the future. We can also be absolutely certain that we're going to see flood
events between now and then. Significant flood events, and I guess looking
back, perhaps it would have been preferable for us to do a better job in
having more surface storage available, or to have more groundwater recharge
capacity available so that we can deal with that next flood event in a way
that enhances our resiliency for the ensuing subsequent drought. But when
you consider today, in the face of all this, we have now embraced the
concept of groundwater sustainability, and have provided direction to local
governments to implement plans that sustain that resource into the future.
The State Water Resources Control Board is doing some remarkable things with
respect to water rights, some of which were likely to be resolved ultimately
through courts, in the decades ahead. But curtailment of some of those most
senior water rights ever in the system are in the daily news, and I think it
demonstrates an attempt by the regulating agencies to manage this limited
resource for the disaster that we're in the middle of. I think, again, I
think we've done what we can do. You can always look back and say we could
have been better prepared for this, had we made storage investments, or
other programmatic investments, but we didn't. We also see these curtailment
orders and water - mandatory water use efficiency mandates upon local
communities and all of these things I think are doing what we can do with
the tools we have today to deal with the problem.
>> Thomas Holyoke: Anything else? Very good. Anything else you would like to
add? I missed anything dramatic?
>> Dave Orth: No, I don't think so.

>> Thomas Holyoke: Thank you very much.
>> Dave Orth: Thank you, thank you.

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