Santa Maria Sells Surplus State Water to Montecito & Goleta

The Santa Maria City Council has approved the sale of some of its surplus State Water supplies to the Montecito Water District and the Goleta Water District.Santa Maria is selling 2,000 acre-feet to Montecito and 1,000 acre-feet to Goleta. “This was actually some water that we had banked over in the San Joaquin Valley for the last several years because of the drought”, says Santa Maria City Councilmember Jack Boysen, “we actually haven’t been able to receive it because of the low allocations of State Water, we haven’t been able to receive the deliveries of it.””This year the agencies over there were able to deliver that water back to us”, Boysen adds, “we got it into the San Luis Reservoir and that’s how we ended up with the surplus.”At $600 per acre-foot, that works out to about $1.8 million dollars for the City of Santa Maria on the sale of the water. One acre-foot of water is about 326,000 gallons. An “average” home in California uses between one-half to one acre-foot of water per year for indoor and outdoor use. “They need it desperately, Montecito especially”, Boysen says about the sale of the water, “Montecito is trying everything they can to shore up their water supplies, for them this is a well-needed shot in the arm.”Boysen says the $1.8 million from the water sale will go into the City of Santa Maria’s water enterprise fund to help offset future rate increases for city water users.