Audit Update: Water Bureau not done defining roles or formulating long-term groundwater plan

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This is a two-year follow-up to our 2020 report, "Groundwater: City identified risks, must develop a long-term plan to address them."

Published

June 27, 2022 12:00 am

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Our 2020 audit of the City’s management of the groundwater system found the Water Bureau was working on seismic and emergency preparedness, water quality and capacity planning, and asset management to address a variety of needs. It still needed to formalize decision-making roles and the organizational structure of the program. We also said the Bureau should document all identified system needs and develop a consolidated, long-term plan to address those needs.

We followed up on our two recommendations, which were in process at the one-year mark and found that both are still in process.

Two recommendations in process

We recommended the Water Bureau clarify and document the decision-making roles and organizational structure of the groundwater program to help ensure issues were addressed in a timely and complete manner.

The Bureau completed a strategy action plan and draft groundwater system management charter that specified roles and responsibilities for key staff and better defined the organizational structure. The Bureau said it expects to further refine the charter and present it to the groundwater steering committee later this year for approval.
We recommended that the Water Bureau document all identified needs for groundwater system improvement and develop a consolidated, long-term plan to prioritize actions within limited resources.

The Bureau launched an adaptive planning program in 2021 to implement a risk-based water system master plan. The Bureau said that plan will be revised and adjusted on a continual basis, allowing it to change course as water demand, supply, and financial conditions change over time. While this master plan includes groundwater, the Bureau has not developed a consolidated, prioritized work plan specific to groundwater. The Bureau said a specific plan is in the works and should be completed early next fiscal year.