The Orange County Grand Jury’s recent report called for the county’s two water agencies to join as “one voice” so that the county can manage its water resources more efficiently, but some water officials said consolidating the two might be too difficult to be beneficial.
The county’s water currently comes from two sources: the Orange County Water District, which draws water from a basin beneath north and central county, and the Municipal Water District of Orange County, which imports water from the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles.
The Orange County Grand Jury—made up of a group of citizens selected by Superior Court judges as a watchdog to the county government—argued in the June 22 report (pdf) that the single leadership could be established by either merging the two existing agencies or creating a new water authority responsible for managing “all aspects of Orange County wholesale water,” though either way would require “a combination of governance and local and state legislative changes.”…