'96 REPORT NEVER FINISHED.

Byline: Heather MacDonald Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - In 1996, the Castaic Lake Water Agency's first five-year report on local water supply and demand was due to the state but never completed because a change in state law moved the deadline ahead one year.

Now the agency is drafting its first comprehensive plan amid critics' charges that the wholesaler allowed four years of urban growth with no clear water management plan in place, and risked losing an emergency supply in case of a drought.

The agency counters that while it submitted a basic plan in 1990, well before the 1996 deadline, the date change freed the agency from completing the five-year update until this year.

State water board officials said the issue is murky because the law is unclear as to whether the 1996 report was required from agencies, even after the deadline was switched to 1995. Agencies that do not submit the reports are not eligible for state relief in drought years. It is unclear whether CLWA would have been subject to that sanction, state officials said.

Michael Kotch, a CLWA director and president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment, said the agency did not do its job.

``The lack of a plan has crippled the board in determining water policy and planning,'' Kotch said. ``It would have been very helpful to have 20-year projections in making decisions.''

CLWA and the valley's four water retailers began crafting the water management plan this week. The plan will project the amount of water available in the valley and compare it with demands.

The agency has ``absolutely not'' suffered because the 1996 plan was not submitted, said CLWA General Manager Robert Sagehorn.

Until now, CLWA has been relying on reports from the Upper Santa Clarita Water Committee, an informal group composed of the general managers of the water retailers and Sagehorn, to make planning decisions, Sagehorn said.

But critics, especially the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment, charge that the committee has inflated the amount of water available in the valley. A dozen developments, including the 22,000-home Newhall Ranch project, relied on that report to identify water for new homes.

The dispute over the 1996 water management plan played a part in a Kern County judge's June decision to halt the Newhall Ranch project until concerns over the water supply were resolved.

CLWA officials have also relied on the Integrated Water Resources Management Plan, which has never been ratified by the board or released to the public, to make planning decisions, Sagehorn said.

In 1991, the state Legislature ordered water wholesalers to compile 20- year water management plans starting in 1996. In 1990, CLWA voluntarily submitted its annual projection of supply and demand to the state, Sagehorn said.

But before the first mandatory plan came due in 1996, another bill changed the due date of these plans to years that ended in ``5'' or ``0,'' allowing CLWA and other wholesalers to postpone their reports until this year, according to Sagehorn. That served to put both water wholesalers and retailers on the same schedule, he said.

Once again, critics of the CLWA dispute this, saying that the water agency should have filed a report in 1996, and was remiss in not doing so. Because of the CLWA's failure to file a report, Santa Clarita residents were left without backup sources of water in the event of a drought, said SCOPE Vice President Lynne Plambeck.