Brea planners have given the Planning Commission overly optimistic numbers regarding Brea’s future water supply and the City’s ability to provide water to proposed big water users such as this Project. Under the recently adopted Hillside Residential Zoning, fewer new homes are now allowed in Carbon Canyon than could have been built as projected using the recently revoked 1986 Carbon Canyon Specific Plan. Planners have therefore assumed that ample water will be available and that this Project can be built with no need to acquire new or expand existing water supply entitlements and resources.

But recent events have shown that this reasoning is no longer sound or reliable.

     • Governor Schwarzenegger has declared a water shortage
       state of emergency for all of California.
     • Metropolitan Water District officials have declared a water alert, urging serious conservation and
       raising the potential or rationing in the near future.
     • Earlier court orders reducing water shipments from the Sacramento Delta approximately 30% to
       protect endangered fish have been upheld and are being implemented. Water levels in
       reservoirs fed by the Colorado River are drastically down and are expected to show no
       improvement this year. Sierra snow-pack for the 2008 season is again below normal. Lake
       Oroville is at 50% capacity.
     • MWD has been withdrawing 500,000 acre feet out of storage per year from California reservoirs
       to meet existing need. Matt Stone of Municipal Water of Orange County gave a detailed
       presentation on the challenges to Southern California’s water supply and stated that rainfall
       would not end the problem, only major changes to the Delta and to water use statewide.
     • The Brea City Council met on June 17, 2008, and passed a resolution calling for “aggressive
       city-wide water cutbacks.”

Every Californian is urged to conserve and mandatory cutbacks can be expected soon. Yet this Project would place an unreasonably large and permanent demand on Brea’s water supply. Currently the site uses NO water.

Here are the numbers:
     • Total current use by the City of Brea (Mall,
       industry, business, and 40,000 residents)
       equals 12,060 acre feet per year.
     • Projected use by this Project for 179 acres
       of residential lots, manufactured slopes and
       graded hillsides that would be irrigated
       equals roughly 358,000 gallons per day, or
       over 400 acre feet per year.
     • For just 165 residences, the Project’s water
       demand would equal about 3.5% of the
       entire City of Brea’s yearly water use.
       Current water use on the property is 0
       gallons.
     • Five hundred Brea households use 250
       acre feet of water per year; 165 Canyon
       Crest households will use 400 acre feet per
       year – a whopping 5 times the normal use
       for a Brea household.
     • All of the proposed water used for this
       project would be drinking quality, even
       though most of the use would come from irrigation of the 135 acres of manufactured slopes. No
       recycled or graywater use is written into this Project.

The per capita use of water by this Project is staggering. Why should all Breans be asked to conserve water if this Project is not required to take much more vigorous steps to reduce its overall water use?

water users ALERT
Rest assured that when MWD starts water rationing and our lawns go brown, Canyon Crest's manufactured slopes will still be green with one-gallon replacement trees!