The independent districts that govern water supply and sewage treatment in Montecito are moving in the direction of consolidation, setting aside a study that appears to undermine the rationale for creating one big agency.
The Summerland sewage, or “sanitary,” district is in the mix, too, waiting to see what its neighbors will do.
The Montecito Water District, founded in 1921, serves a population of nearly 12,000 people in Montecito, Summerland and Toro Canyon today. In recent years, the water board has been promoting the idea of consolidation, which could mean swallowing up the nearby sanitary districts or joining with them to form one full-service agency.
This Jan. 27, the water board took the first official step toward consolidation, approving a draft memorandum of understanding for all three district board presidents to sign.
Last week, the draft MOU was on the agenda for a vote by the board of the Montecito Sanitary District, an agency that was founded in 1947. The MOU proposes to “memorialize a cooperative and ongoing working relationship” among the Montecito water and sanitary districts and the Summerland Sanitary District to “coordinate and collaborate” on the consolidation of all three into “a unified entity.”
On March 25, at the end of a three-hour discussion, three out of five Montecito sanitary district board members signaled their support for consolidation. They rebuffed a bid by board President Rock Rockenbach and Director Carter Ohlmann to “cease efforts to consolidate with the Montecito Water District” and instead focus on the sanitary district’s “strategic priorities.”
Board Director Woody Barrett voted “no” on that motion, and Vice President Dana Newquist and Director Dorinne Lee Johnson abstained. The hearing on the Montecito Water District MOU was tabled until April 8.
‘At odds’ over recycling
According to a 2023 consolidation study by Raftelis, a Los Angles consulting firm hired by the Montecito water and sanitary districts, a merger of the two would result in no more than $65,000 in yearly savings out of their combined annual budget of $32 million.
“The potential for cost savings is limited and in itself probably does not justify consolidation,” the study stated.
Raftelis concluded that consolidation would make the most sense if both districts decided to “move forward with a large recycled water program.” But in March 2024, citing the high cost of wastewater recycling, the Montecito water board voted to “place any further pursuit of recycled water on hold.”
“I’m very much in favor of recycling water,” Rockenbach told his colleagues on the sanitary district board on Wednesday. “When I found out that Montecito Water had stepped away from recycling water as of 2024, I was frankly shocked. It took away the driver for a ‘marriage’ to happen … If we can’t do recycled water, there’s no need for consolidation.”
Ohlmann asked his colleagues, “How do you get to recycled water if you’re turning the entire Montecito Sanitary District over to a board of directors that is not interested in recycled water? Are you just hoping that they’ll change their mind someday?”
Rockenbach and Ohlmann said the board should suspend further action on consolidation until the district could conduct its own studies on the “financial feasibility” of recycling.
But water board Director Ken Coates, speaking by Zoom as a member of the public, said the Montecito Water District had “suspended all further activity on wastewater recycling because of financial infeasibility.”
“That’s clear, and I think it’s full stop,” he said. “The likelihood that that decision would change is very remote, and having your staff discuss that item with the Montecito water staff would not be productive. It’s a waste of time because the decision has been made.”
Motions by Rockenbach and Ohlmann to suspend all further action on consolidation until the sanitary district could conduct its own study of the financial feasibility of wastewater also failed to win a majority of votes on Wednesday.
Director Woody Barrett said he believed one regional combined district could save on operating costs, obtain more grants for recycling water, and hire needed employees, including a human resources manager. And he noted that the Montecito water and sanitary districts “have been at odds” for years.
Johnson, a member of the Santa Barbara County Local Agency Formation Commission, the agency that reviews applications for special district consolidations, said she, too, favored the idea of creating one district to handle both water supply and wastewater treatment.
‘More efficiencies’?
According to 2024 Santa Barbara County data, Montecito’s per capita residential water use is 195 gallons per day. By comparison, the daily per capita water use in Goleta is 51 gallons.
All five sanitary district board members voiced their support for wastewater recycling on Wednesday. But about 85 percent of the drinking water supply in Montecito, a wealthy community of one-acre lots and large estates, goes on landscaping and can’t be collected for recycling. By itself, Barrett said, Montecito doesn’t “have enough flow” to recycle wastewater.
“There are more efficiencies” in a three-way consolidation, he said. “We’re all three small districts with limited personnel … We have an astronomical amount of projects going on … I think consolidation is a great path towards accomplishing recycling for our community.”
But, Barrett clarified later, “My view is, consolidation is good for all three districts, recycling or no.”
Newquist said that someday the state may require all coastal sanitary districts to stop sending treated wastewater into the ocean through underwater pipelines, effectively forcing them to begin recycling their wastewater.
Noah Boland, a spokesman for Heal the Ocean, a citizens’ group that supports wastewater recycling, asked the sanitary district board to look into merging with the Summerland Sanitary District. He said it was unclear whether consolidation with the Montecito Water District would result in any recycling.
Ohlmann and Rockenbach said that rather than entering into a plan for consolidation, a process that would take four or five years, the Montecito Sanitary District should be focused on fixing its sewage pipes and deciding how and whether to replace its aging wastewater treatment plant.
“We’ve got work that needs to be done,” Ohlmann said.
Rockenbach added: “When you’ve got a plant tied together by bailing wire and duct tape, it’s not a good time to consolidate.”
The district has commissioned a $1.7 million study on two options: replacing its treatment plant or, alternatively, shipping Montecito’s wastewater to the City of Santa Barbara for treatment. The study is expected to be completed this fall.
“I’m perplexed,” Ohlmann told his colleagues after the vote. “We’re not even close to unanimity on anything.”
Last week, Diantha Glaser, business manager at the Summerland Sanitary District, founded in 1957, said it made sense for Summerland to send its wastewater to a larger district for treatment, “but it also has to be in the interests of our customers.”
“We will not be joining the Montecito Water District without the Montecito Sanitary District,” Glaser said.
‘Water Security Team’ goals
A merger of Montecito’s water and sanitary districts has long been a goal of the “Water Security Team” candidates who gained control of the Montecito water and sanitary boards over several election cycles, beginning in 2016.
The Water Security slates were hand-picked and backed over time by $250,000 in campaign contributions from a group of wealthy donors, many of them Birnam Wood Golf Club members, who promoted the concept of district consolidation at public hearings and in the pages of the Montecito Journal.
The Water Security slates won handily. In addition to the flood of glossy mailers they were able to pay for, they were riding a voter backlash against the water rationing that had been imposed in Montecito during the drought of 2011 to 2018.
The candidates, who presently occupy all five seats on the Montecito water board and three seats on the Montecito sanitary board, promised voters they would bring in wastewater recycling to help boost local water supplies. They said it was time to stop sending Montecito’s treated wastewater into the ocean.
Today, there is still no wastewater recycling in Montecito. A modest plan to spray non-potable treated wastewater onto the massive grass lawn at the Santa Barbara Cemetery, just across Channel Drive from the sanitary district headquarters, never materialized. The cemetery is one of several large commercial water users near the district, including the Four Seasons Biltmore, Music Academy of the West and Rosewood Miramar Beach hotel.
In 2019, the sanitary district board purchased a $140,000 expandable water recycling plant, the first in Montecito, to start irrigating test plots on the cemetery lawn. It was to be the first step of a $5 million project providing non-potable water to the entire cemetery by early 2021.
But the makeup of the board changed in the 2020 elections, triggering an exodus of employees, including the general manager. The pilot project was mothballed. Today, the equipment is sitting in storage at the district.
