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Council adopts 2025 Urban Water Management Plan, adds caveat and orders study session on SFPUC modeling
Summary
Palo Alto adopted its 2025 Urban Water Management Plan June 8 but added language reserving the city's right to challenge SFPUC's "design-drought" assumptions; council directed staff to return after a recess for a study session and to coordinate with the Utilities Advisory Commission and BOSA on concerns about modeling and implications.
The Palo Alto City Council voted unanimously on June 8 to adopt the city's 2025 Urban Water Management Plan and its required Water Shortage Contingency Plan, while simultaneously instructing staff to add a clear caveat to the filing and to return to council for a full study session on SFPUC modeling and the "design-drought" assumptions that many residents and the Utilities Advisory Commission (UAC) criticized.
"This is a regulatory compliance document," Assistant Director of Resources Lisa Bolier told council during the public hearing presentation. "We have to follow the Department of Water Resources' prescriptive requirements and demonstrate water-supply reliability over a 20-year planning timeframe."
Multiple commenters and UAC Commissioner Utaf Gupta urged the council to incorporate edits or annotations challenging SFPUC's draft supply modeling, which the UAC and several speakers argued overstates worst-case cutbacks and could lead to unnecessary rate increases and expensive capital responses. Public commenters cited the Bay-Delta Plan proposals and noted that SFPUC's scenario of large multi-year cutbacks produces alarming percent reductions that, if uncontextualized, could alarm residents and affect policy choices.
City staff and legal counsel warned that the UWMP must meet state filing requirements and in some places relies on wholesale supplier inputs; staff said large policy changes or legal positions about SFPUC's modeling are more effectively pursued through BOSA (the joint board of wholesale customers) and other forums. Still, councilors pressed staff on whether the UWMP could flag the city's concerns without creating confusion for the state review process.
Mayor Vinker moved to adopt the staff recommendation with two additions: (1) insert language that the UWMP is based on SFPUC supplied inputs but that the city does not thereby endorse SFPUC's design-drought assumptions and reserves its right to further objection; and (2) direct staff to return after the council break for a study session to examine Commissioner Gupta's recommendations and next steps, including coordination with the UAC and BOSA. The council voted unanimously to adopt that course.
What happens next: Staff will file the UWMP with the California Department of Water Resources to meet the July 1 deadline, including the caveat the council directed. Council also asked staff to set a study session date after the July recess and to work through UAC and the city's BOSA representative on potential next steps to challenge or refine the wholesale supplier's modeling assumptions.
