EL CENTRO — Members of the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors suggested Tuesday an increase of rates and the seeking of grants to address infrastructure needs.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the directors heard about a two-page report issued by the Infrastructure Committee that reads the agency owns, operates, and maintains critical infrastructure required to serve customers across nearly 6,500 square miles, including 7,000 miles of distribution and transmission lines, 37 internal generators with over 600 MW of capacity, 3,000 miles of canals and drains, 12 reservoirs, and the operation and maintenance of Imperial Dam and the All-American Canal.
The IID’s infrastructure delivers water to nearly 450,000 acres of land and power to over 160,000 customers.
“The sheer scale of IID’s infrastructure required to provide service to customers, historically and today, is monumental,” the report reads. “In November 2023, the Board of Directors formed the Infrastructure Committee composed of Directors (John Brooks) Hamby and (Gina) Dockstader to study and recommend solutions to the Board regarding the District’s current and future infrastructure needs and the resources necessary to meet these needs.”
To date, the committee has worked on the development of a 15-year Asset Management Plan — currently in draft state — that seeks to assess the state of current assets, determine the desire level of service, assess asset criticality, prioritize and plan life cycle replacements and repairs, and recommend long-term funding strategies.
Regarding new infrastructure, the committee has drafted a preliminary 15-year capital plan for water, power, general services, and information technology.
The committee has provided feedback in developing cost-of-service studies for water and power, including the costs of asset management and new capital, the report reads.
The committee has also found several key findings — continued underinvestment and deferred maintenance in existing aging infrastructure pose a significant risk to customers’ water and power service reliability and cost-effectiveness; new infrastructure is required to make the District more efficient in customer service and to comply with new state and federal regulatory requirements; and the fact that current revenues do not cover the costs of operating and maintaining existing infrastructure, so additional resources are necessary to fund critical and necessary investments in current and future infrastructure.
“It’s a well written document with some findings and recommendations,” IID Board Chair Alex Cardenas said. “I do wanna recognize both director Dockstafer and vice chair Hamby for putting this together.”
“What tends to happen is we move front money from our (Operations and Maintenance) for emergencies such as Niland’s storm,” Director Dockstader said, who added the IID has continuously spent funds to address emergencies, and that underinvestment and deferred maintenance on the existing aging infrastructure poses a risk to services. “These are things that we do need to be better at.”
Building new infrastructure, as constantly required, will help the IID be more efficient in customer service, Director Dockstader mentioned.
“I do hate to tell you that our current revenues don’t cover the cost of operating and maintaining existing infrastructure,” Director Dockstader added. “We do need additional resources, especially for new, state federal requirements, such as the EV mandates.”
Vice chair Hamby said the assessment management plan is expected to be ready within the next month and will be updated on an annual basis. Such plan includes the assessment of the current infrastructure, certain thresholds needed to get a sense of where the IID is at and numbers associated with the condition of the current assets, as well as determining the desired level of service, reliability, the risk of failure and the likelihood of failure.
At the same time, the IID will prioritize and develop the life cycle replacement plan and funding needed to fund infrastructure replacement.
“Of course, there’s also cost of service, which is required as part of our policy, which is being undertaken both on the water and power sides to be able to take a look at what the current needs are, what the new infrastructure we need in the future is, and then building that into our cost of service,” Hamby said. “So as director Dockster mentioned, we have seriously underinvested and deferred maintenance on our existing infrastructure that poses real risk to our reliability and cost effectiveness in the long run.”
The board vice chair went on to say that the IID needs to make investments in new infrastructure that’s required to make the District both more efficient and then to comply with state and federal regulatory requirements.
“Our current revenues do not cover the cost presently,” coincidentally with Director Dockstader Vice Chair Hamby said.
The next committee steps will be to build public awareness of the scale of the infrastructure, investment that’s required, the construction that’ll have take place over the next 15 years, and developing adequate revenues, which are both rate and grant funded, Hamby said.
The board vice chair noted that there has been significant federal investment through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act to make funding available at that level, and there is also Proposition 4 on the ballot this November that will also provide opportunities for funding.
“But, overall, we need to develop those revenues to fund and develop our biennial budgets and then undertake the credit building activities to lower our borrowing cost by improving our credit,” Hamby said. “There’s also project bottlenecks that we’ll want to make sure that we expedite. The more we push things off and the more projects are delayed, the more expensive things become over time.”
The vice chair considered that if these projects were built in the last 20 years the cost would have been significantly less than today.
“One of our other goals is to ensure that we’re removing those project bottlenecks, utilizing all the resources internally that we can, and making sure that in the planning, sign, construction, environmental compliance, procurement, contracting, and other stages that we’re making sure that we remove those bottlenecks,” Hamby said. “And then once we have the adequate revenues adopt the budget revisions that are necessary to fund these projects.”
“I’ve been on this board for six years, and I’ve never seen a document like this ever in terms of being a the telegraph and forecast,” Chairman Cardenas added. “So I do wanna thank, again, the infrastructure committee.”
“I’m in favor of improving infrastructure,” El Centro resident Pete Rodriguez said during the public comment portion of the item. “My concerns are not to have any rate increases.”
Rodriguez also questioned the fact that while the board is planning for the next 15 years at the same time Directors have mentioned the agency has no funding.
“I don’t want surprises in our light bills to pay for the cost down the road,” the local resident said, highlighting that the IID did a great job addressing Niland’s storm a few years ago. “It was tremendous job, but how many miracles can you pull out of your hat? Just be honest. It’s pretty limited.”
Chairman Cardenas questioned General Manager Jamie Asbury about project management offices within the IID, to which the GM said that while the water side has a single department for such tasks each of the other departments have their own project management team.
“Water’s a little bit different because the projects are more concentrated,” Asbury said. “The power department has more varied projects.”
Director Javier Gonzalez — the only director seeking reelection — said most of the IID’s bills are high due to the cost of fuel needed to generate electricity.
“But also we have to go out and buy a large percentage of our energy out in the open market and to avoid that we need to fix our infrastructure,” Director Gonzalez said. “We’re hoping that after these elections at the national level (and) the national crisis kind of come lower and our rates will go lower.”
Director Gonzalez considered that the infrastructure plan is doable.
“Our infrastructure is really bad,” Gonzalez said, adding that the board cannot continue kicking the can.