Our first speaker, David Panaro, R.G., is the Groundwater Manager for the County of Ventura, and also Staff Hydrologist for the Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency (FCGMA), as both agencies are based in the Watershed Protection District (VCWPD) offices at the Ventura County Government Center in Ventura, California.  David Panaro has over 20 years experience in the soils, geology, geotechnical engineering, and hydrology aspects of VenturaCounty water resources.  He obtained his B.A. degree in Earth Science with an emphasis in Geology from CalStateUniversity, Northridge.  David has worked for the County of Ventura since 1991, and is a California Registered Geologist.

The Fox Canyon Aquifer is the County's most important groundwater reservoir and generally underlies most of coastal Ventura County at depths ranging from about 500 to 2000 feet below ground surface.  It is exposed to the ocean up to several miles off shore.  The seawater-freshwater interface in the shallower aquifers is found below much of the coastline and is reaching further inland due to overpumping.  However, the freshwater-seawater interface in deeper the Fox Canyon Aquifer basically remains offshore.  The GMA has a management plan that currently needs to be updated, from when it was created over 20 years ago. 

The update to the GMA plan has a lot to accomplish.  For example, there are some concepts/ideas that need to be incorporated into the plan that embrace new water treatment technologies, and other ideas updated to perhaps simplify the plan's overly-complex and antiquated management of water resources using the "safe yield" concept.  Now, use and reuse of wastewater is becoming more important, since it is clear we have limited imported surface water supplies available.  As management of coastal Ventura County water resources continues to be dominated by agricultural interests, it may take a couple of decades for the public water agencies to actually get to invest and build the infrastructure for the long-term management of the local water supplies. Once the farmers mine-out the groundwater supplies and sell their land to homeowners, the public will fund construction of the needed water resources management projects to fix what the farmers did.  Don't get me started...As an expert on coastal seawater intrusion control/management I think Ventura County has a long list of projects they need to complete to protect their groundwater supplies.  I trust David Panaro will share ideas to the GMA update plan that live within the current political environment and looks forward to when the land use in the area has converted from farming to urban interests.

Our second speaker and host, Don Kendall, PhD, PE, is the General Manager for the Calleguas Municipal Water District (Calleguas).  He has been working hard over the last ten years to complete construction of a "regional brine line" in eastern Ventura County.  It generally runs along the Conejo-Calleguas Creek streambed alignment, consisting of a large diameter high-density polyethylene (HDPE).  Brine from wastewater treatment processes and wastewater from the upstream areas are planned to be transported by this pipeline from the Moorpark area to the Ventura coast.  The main purpose in building this pipeline is to address the level of elevated chlorides found in water delivered by Met to Calleguas, with additional chlorides naturally added to the water by sweat after it is used by the public and chlorine added to disinfect the wastewater before it leaves as effluent from a treatment plant.  The farmers that brought this issue up to the LA Regional Water Quality Control Board did a good job diverting attention to this chloride issue affecting the growth of their crops, than have the board dwell on their contamination of the groundwater basins and streams from their use of nitrate fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.

Calleguas has the opportunity of using potentially two existing ocean outfall pipelines.  They include one belonging to the City of Port Hueneme, which has a design with multiple diffusion holes to allow broad mixing of outfall water with ocean water.  The other belongs to the nearby Reliant Energy power plant.  Calleguas plans to use both outfall pipelines to manage its brine disposal issues.  There has been some regulatory concerns with disposal of brine water to ocean outfalls.  Many studies on these concerns have shown them to be insignificant, considering the vast quantity of ocean water, allowing the projects to continue.  Most of the studies have focused on water quality issues.  It is interesting that many issues we have with quality of fresh water supplies, are non-issues with relation to seawater quality.  For example, common metals found in fresh water simply precipitate out in the sediments as they encounter the salty/super-saturated conditions of seawater.

As our population continues to grow in Southern California we will continue to see the need for construction of regional brine lines to move salts from the upper parts of our watersheds to ocean outfall pipelines.  We only have the Santa Ana River Interceptor (SARI) pipeline brine line network in the Santa Ana River Watershed as a prime example of how many agencies in a watershed cooperated to complete its construction and operation.  We cannot have very salty water in our groundwater basins, otherwise, they will rapidly become unusable as water supplies.  We have to move our salts out to sustain our water supplies.  There is a growing concern with regulators that the transport of brine out of the watersheds by pipelines will remove water flow in streambeds and harm their ecosystems or have no water for fish.  These issues will continue to bring up the idea of "Valuing Water", valuing it simply as a commodity or grasping the concepts of value for other uses, such as aesthetics, ecosystem enhancement/maintenance, for quality-of-life needs. 

Looking forward to the upcoming April 10th dinner meeting in Thousand Oaks at the Calleguas MWD headquarters.  Hope to see you there.  If you cannot attend please let other folks know about this event that you think might be interested.  It is another great opportunity to Make Connections with California's Water People and Ideas!