Item 21 - Public Hearing - Resolutions Approving the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan and the 2025 Water Shortage Contingency Plan

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202S WATER SHORTAGE CONTINGENCY PLAN MAY 2026/FINAL DRAFT/CAROLLO and United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) establish enforceable maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for PFOA and PFOS, some agencies may supplement their local supplies with increased purchases of MET water(MET, 2025). EPA finalized the first national drinking water standards for six PFAS compounds in April 2024.These standards include enforceable MCLs for PFOA and PFOS set at 4 parts per trillion (ppt). In May 2025 the EPA announced that it would extend the compliance deadline for PFOA and PFOS from 2029 to 2031 to provide additional time for testing, planning, and installation of treatment technologies.While MET and its member agencies continue to monitor and test PFAS in imported and local sources, the delay in the federal compliance date allows additional time to evaluate treatment options, coordinate funding, and plan system upgrades necessary to meet forthcoming federal PFAS standards. PFAS have been detected in the OC Basin in very small amounts (ppt), entering primarily via the Santa Ana River whose flows infiltrate into the basin. Despite playing no role in releasing PFAS into the environment, OCWD is working with its cities and retail water districts to remove it from local water supplies in order to comply with new state and federal regulations. More than 100 wells have been impacted due to various state and federal regulations. Fifteen impacted agencies will have to temporarily purchase more costly imported water to replace PFAS contaminated supplies.As of 2025, 53 impacted wells are back online due to close to a billion dollars being spent on state-of-the-art testing, research and piloting of different treatment systems, and design and construction of treatment plants that are now operational. 3.3 Six Standard Water Shortage Levels Per Water Code Section 10632 (a)(3)(A), Suppliers must include the six standard water shortage levels that represent shortages from the normal reliability as determined in the AWSDA or cross-reference their shortage levels to the standard levels. The shortage levels have been standardized to provide a consistent regional and statewide approach to conveying the relative severity of water supply shortage conditions. This is an outgrowth of the severe statewide drought of 2012-2016, and the widely recognized public communication and state policy uncertainty associated with the many different local definitions of water shortage levels. The six standard water shortage levels correspond to progressively increasing estimated shortage conditions (up to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and greater than 50 percent shortage compared to the normal reliability condition) and align with the response actions the Supplier would implement to meet the severity of the impending shortages (Table 1). Table 1 Cross-Reference for Standard vs Supplier Shortage Levels Standard Shortage Levels Percent Shortage Range Suppliers Shortage Levels Percent Shortage Range 1 Up to 10% 1 Up to 10% 2 Up to 20% 2 Up to 20% 3 Up to 30% 3 Up to 30% 4 Up to 40% 4 Up to 40% 5 Up to 50% 5 Up to 50% 6 Greater than 50% 6 Greater than 50% Source:Water Code Section 10632(a)(3)(B) CITY OF SANTA ANA 16