SECTIONS 81600-81601 - California Statutes

WATER CODE

SECTION 81600-81601

81600. This division shall be known and may be cited as the San
Francisco Bay Area Regional Water System Financing Authority Act.

81601. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) The City and County of San Francisco has acquired or
constructed a system of reservoirs, pipelines and tunnels, and
treatment plants that provides water to 2.4 million Californians who
live in San Francisco and in neighboring communities in Alameda, San
Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties.
(b) Over two-thirds of the Californians who rely on San Francisco'
s regional water system, approximately 1.6 million persons, live
outside San Francisco. A substantial majority of industrial,
commercial, institutional, and governmental users are also located in
neighboring communities rather than in San Francisco itself.
(c) The reliability of this water infrastructure system is of
vital importance to the health, welfare, safety, and economy of the
region which it supplies.
(d) In turn, this region is of vital importance to the entire
State of California, because of the resident industries,
universities, and commercial enterprises that employ millions of
Californians and generate billions of dollars in exports and tax
revenues to the state.
(e) The regional water system is old, designed to outdated seismic
safety standards, and either crosses or is located on, or adjacent
to, three major active earthquake faults, the Calaveras Fault, the
San Andreas Fault, and the Hayward Fault. Engineering investigations
have disclosed that the system is at risk of catastrophic failure in
a major earthquake. Many areas in all four counties now served, in
the event of a major earthquake, face possible interruptions in their
supplies of potable water for up to 30 days, and some areas could be
without water for as long as 60 days.
(f) Interruptions in water supply of this magnitude and duration
to a densely populated metropolitan region could be disastrous for
public health and safety and for the regional and state economy. In
addition, uncontrolled releases of water from pipelines, tunnels, and
reservoirs could create severe flood damage and environmental harm
to fish and wildlife habitat in the communities in which those
facilities are located.
(g) Pursuant to the terms of the master water sales contract
between the City and County of San Francisco and its wholesale
customers, the retail water customers of the City and County of San
Francisco provide the initial financing for the construction of
improvements to the regional water system, and the wholesale
customers do not pay for those improvements until those improvements
are placed into service.
(h) Many separate cities, special districts, and public utilities
are responsible for the distribution of water in portions of the bay
area served, on a wholesale basis, by the San Francisco regional
water supply system. The distribution of responsibility among many
agencies impedes coordinated regional actions, including financing,
to respond to the crisis.
(i) It is the intent of the Legislature to enable the City and
County of San Francisco, and the entities in Alameda, San Mateo, and
Santa Clara Counties that rely on the San Francisco regional water
system, acting collectively, to secure funds necessary to implement
the prompt construction and reconstruction of the San Francisco
regional water system, and to make those funds available to the City
and County of San Francisco for projects designed and intended in
substantial part to improve the reliability of the regional water
system, including, but not limited to, strengthening the system's
ability to withstand seismic events.
(j) It is not the intent of the Legislature to change the
governance structure, operational control, or existing ownership of
San Francisco's regional water system.