Everything else the District does matters. None of it matters as much as this. What follows is ranked deliberately.
- Stabilize the treatment plant now, and keep it safe and operational until a long-term solution is decided and built.
- Decide where Montecito's wastewater will be treated for the long term — here, or in Santa Barbara.
- Turn the completed collection-system planning into funded, scheduled, measurable projects.
- Retain the people who run the system, and keep them safe.
- Finance the capital program responsibly, and stay in regulatory compliance throughout.
- Cooperate closely with neighboring agencies, and judge any organizational change against measurable benefit to Montecito.
The common theme is execution. Study has to become decision, decision has to become execution, and execution has to produce results residents can see and measure.
The treatment plant
Montecito's plant was built in the 1960s and much of it is original. Its electrical system is not grounded and is incompatible with modern equipment. Blowers central to the treatment process are no longer manufactured, and replacement parts are bought secondhand. Testing has confirmed a chemical reaction cracking the major in-ground concrete from the inside — structural, not reversible, and affecting the headworks and storage basins.
None of this can be switched off while it is repaired. Sewage arrives every hour, whether it is dry, rainy or windy. That is what makes the plant's condition a risk question rather than a budgeting question: the margin between a critical failure and a public-health event is measured in hours, and in wet weather, less.
And none of it is news. Engineering studies the District commissioned in 2022 and 2023 identified the failing equipment in writing and ranked it urgent. What was missing was not information. Not one piece of that equipment has been replaced.
Two things have to happen, in this order. Keeping the plant safe and operational is required whichever path the District takes, and that work should not wait on a decision it does not depend on. An investment-grade audit begun since I joined the Board is under way to establish what stabilization requires. Investments that only pay off under one alternative are a different matter and should wait for the decision wherever waiting can be done safely — rebuilding for another thirty years of local treatment is not the same question as keeping this plant running through a transition.
Then the Board has to decide where Montecito's wastewater is treated for the coming decades: a rebuilt plant here, or conveyance to the City of Santa Barbara. That decision should rest on cost, risk, and control. The comparison will never be perfect, but it should be as close to apples-to-apples as the available information allows — including what it costs to operate the existing plant throughout a transition, and what Montecito gives up in control over its own rates and infrastructure to a body its residents do not elect.
Both the audit and the evaluation of alternatives are scheduled to reach the Board in 2027. The analysis cannot run forever. We need facts, and we need a timely decision. When enough is known, study becomes decision.
A fuller account — the engineering studies, what the concrete testing found, and how the two alternatives compare — is set out in a short briefing paper on the treatment plant.
The rest of the work
These matter. They are ranked behind the plant, and saying so plainly is part of having priorities at all.
The collection system
The District maintains roughly 74 miles of sewers, force mains and lift stations. The hard planning work is done — condition assessment, life-expectancy analysis, a wet-weather study, a prioritized project list, and a septic-to-sewer master plan. The Board's job now is to fund it, schedule it, and finish it, ranked by risk rather than by age, with progress measured in miles relined and wet-weather flow actually coming down.
The people who run the system
The District had been losing staff to neighboring agencies. In an organization this small, where a handful of people carry most of the operating knowledge, that is not a personnel inconvenience — a district that cannot keep its staff cannot execute a capital program, however well that program is planned. Benefits have been updated and a multi-year agreement is in place. Training and safety come next, and safety matters more than usual at a plant with ungrounded electrical systems.
Paying for the work
Rates were studied and set in 2026. That was the revenue side. The harder question is still ahead: a long-term financial plan for the capital program — what it will cost, what reserves and revenues exist, where the gap sits, and how it closes. A plant decision of this size cannot be financed by hoping. All of it proceeds under a regulatory clock, with a discharge permit to renew while the work is under way.
Regional cooperation, and organizational change
We are stronger together, and most of what cooperation can achieve — shared services, joint projects, mutual aid, joint powers agreements — requires no change in governance at all. Consolidation is a different question. I am opposed to it until there is a demonstrated need, and that need went away in 2024: the independent study found no meaningful financial case for merging, its strongest rationale was unified governance of a recycled-water program, and Montecito Water has since suspended recycling indefinitely as not financially feasible. If recycling becomes viable I would welcome that conversation — but a shared project does not require a merged agency.
What this adds up to
The District has capable staff, a great deal of completed engineering, and a far clearer picture of its own infrastructure than it had several years ago. What it lacked was the discipline to turn that into sequenced decisions and finished work.
Study has to become decision. Decision has to become execution. And execution has to produce results that Montecito residents can see and measure.