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1 N - ) SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA WATER USERS ASSOCIATION 155 Bovet Road, Suite 302 San Mateo, CA 94402 Phone: (650) 349 -3000 FAX: (650) 349 -8395 Contact: Art Jensen, General Manager (650) 349 -3000 GOVERNOR SIGNS 3 BILLS PROTECTING HETCH HETCHY By passing and signing the three Hetch Hetchy water bills, the legislature and the governor have taken a major step to protect 2.4 million people, businesses and community institutions that depend on the earthquake - vulnerable Bay Area regional water system. These bills will help avoid a human and economic catastrophe from long -term water outages. We appreciate the legislators' and the governor's leadership to complete this legislation over initial opposition by San Francisco. The legislative effort was led by Assemblyman Lou Papan (D- Millbrae), Senator Jackie Speier (D- Hillsborough), and other legislators from Alameda, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties. Their action, supported by almost the entire Assembly and Senate, also is a forceful statement that the state has a vital interest in the reliability of this system. The state legislature provides strong representation for the residents and businesses in Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Labor unions, business, and community organizations also provided valuable support for the legislative effort. In addition, this legislation ensures that tens of thousands of jobs will be created to rebuild the system. Now, San Francisco, which manages the system, must rebuild it without delay. The 29 cities, districts and other water agencies in the three counties, which purchase water from San Francisco and strongly supported these bills, will do their part to make this happen. They can begin right away to implement the legislation, which includes a new water agency to represent them and a mechanism to raise money to pay their share of fixing the system. The legislation makes clear that the state will be watching closely to be certain that the 13- year, $3.6 billion capital improvement program proceeds and that the risk is greatly reduced without delay. Meanwhile, development of a crisis - management plan must get underway promptly to cope with the human and economic problems if the regional system should be ruptured before it is fixed and communities are faced with a long -term water outage.