By Joseph Richardson
I am writing this and sharing it as widely as I can. My hope is to inform as many people about the false claims and faulty planning by the City of Ventura Water Dept staff.
The first claim: There is a water shortage:
1. There is NO water shortage. The city has multiple sources that can meet the city demand. The fact is the City Water Dept staff have and are acting in a manner that reduces the water availability tor users and allows them to falsely claim a shortage.
2. Currently there is a surface flow in the Ventura River, going by within 15 feet of the abandoned surface diversion facility. That is nearly 20 times the current amount of water the city uses daily. This river water is the cheapest and highest quality water available to our users. If it was being produced into the system the use of the much lower quality deep well water that is in distress as a supply could be reduced and EVERYONE would be better off.
The second claim: The city is caught in legal restraints and settlements
1. The city conceding to a legal settlement on the estuary was a TOTAL THEFT of city water resources. The fact is there would NOT BE AN estuary if the city didn’t put its’ tertiary treated effluent in there to begin with. Based on the latest costs estimates the city could have easily permitted and built an ocean outfall instead of WASTING what will be hundreds of millions of dollars on their WaterPure experiment that has NO chance of ever being permitted for potable use.
The amount of water ALREADY spent on this boondoggle could have built multiple reverse osmosis facilities to make currently available groundwater available and of higher quality of ANY source the city currently is using.
Some final thoughts:
The city continues to put out numbers to backup their ‘silly’ math on how we are in a shortage by claiming that the Ventura River production facilities, in a normal year, are capable of producing significant water. Well as far as river flows go, the river IS CURRENTLY flowing in a NORMAL YEAR flow but the facilities are NOT BEING USED, REPAIRED, OR MAINTAINED deliberately to keep the amount of water produced LESS than what it is possible of producing. Yet again it is only possible IF the city did in fact repair, maintain, and use the facilities at Foster Park, Facilities that have INALIENABLE rights to the water despite false claims made by litigants. INALIENABLE rights that the city decades ago established and were probably PUEBLO rights. The full story on that issue is being completely hidden from the current population of the city even though those in authority at the City Council and Water Commission are in full knowledge of such legal standing.
Joseph Richardson was Production supervisor City of Ventura water 1985-1992
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