Item 21 First Amendment to Interagency Agreement with the Orange County Water District and Moulton Niguel Water District

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Agreement Amendment for Emergency Interconnection Study May 20, 2025 Page 2 Moulton Niguel Water District (MNWD), which serves more than 170,000 customers in Laguna Niguel, Aliso Viejo, Mission Viejo, Laguna Hills, Dana Point, and San Juan Capistrano, relies solely on imported MET water to meet its customers' potable water needs. MNWD is not able to draw from the Orange County Groundwater Basin, as the City of Santa Ana does, because the groundwater basin is only accessible to agencies in northern Orange County that fall within its boundaries. Due to MNWD's sole reliance on imported water, the district is vulnerable to natural disasters or infrastructure failure that cause outages in the MET system. On May 17, 2022, City Council approved an Interagency Agreement (Exhibit 1) with OCWD and MNWD to complete a preliminary design study and environmental analysis to identify the needed environmental mitigations and the necessary infrastructure modifications to Santa Ana's water facilities and distribution system to enable Santa Ana to convey water from the Orange County Groundwater Basin to the water transmission pipeline that supplies south Orange County water agencies in an emergency. Data and information from the study has been used by MNWD to develop a scope of work for a potential program to convey groundwater to MNWD in the event an emergency renders the MET's water delivery infrastructure incapable of making deliveries. Through this potential program, MNWD would build resiliency and provide improved emergency preparedness benefits for the City through increased groundwater production, upgraded backup power, and other critical water infrastructure improvements. The potential emergency water supplies for MNWD would only be available when conditions would have no adverse impacts to Santa Ana's water supply operations. The construction of any facilities recommended as a result of the design, study, and environmental analysis will first require approval by the governing boards of all parties and the development of a subsequent agreement for the construction, operation, and funding of the proposed interconnection. Staff recommends the approval of the recommended action to allow for the preliminary design study and environmental analysis efforts to continue and for final design to begin. There is no cost to the City associated to the study, all costs are borne by MNWD. The City, MNWD, and OCWD reserve the right not to enter into any subsequent agreement after the completion of the study and analysis. (Exhibit 2). ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT There is no environmental impact associated with the action. FISCAL IMPACT There is no fiscal impact associated with the action.