Marin Municipal Water District develops five-year strategic plan

Marin Municipal Water District officials unveiled details this week of a proposed watershed stewardship goal designed to focus on restoration efforts, wildfire preparedness, recreation and facility maintenance.

The goal is among several that the district is packaging into a five-year strategic plan. Other goals include water supply, creating a resilient water system, fiscal responsibility and organizational excellence.

While the strategic plan is a working draft, staff is breaking out discussions on each of these topic areas for discussion with the board of the directors. An update was presented at a special meeting on Monday.

“In this discussion we really want to get some assistance framing it,” said Shaun Horne, the district’s watershed resources manager. “And then evaluating these objectives to make sure that they capture important interests of the board and the community.”

The district, which supplies water to 191,000 residents in central and southern Marin, manages about 19,800 acres of watershed lands in the county.

The overarching aim of the watershed stewardship goal is to “protect and manage Marin Water lands for the long-term benefits for the community and the environment,” according to the working draft.

The watershed stewardship goal is broken down into five objectives, the first being creek restoration. That objective covers efforts such as advancing the district’s coho salmon habitat restoration in Lagunitas Creek, increasing fishery lifecycle monitoring, adding new monitoring technology and working toward restoration efforts in other watersheds within district boundaries.

A second objective is wildfire resiliency, which includes maintaining partnerships with other land managers to enhance emergency response and support. The objective also includes replacing old wildland firefighting and vegetation management equipment, and supporting workforce development through ranger trainee programs and other partnerships with organizations such as AmeriCorps, the California Conservation Corps and others.

There is a third objective that calls for overall stewardship. The district plans to lead habitat restoration projects, trail maintenance, environmental education and community science projects, among other efforts.

Objective four is recreation, which proposes several efforts to maintain the land to support visitors engaging in nature-based activities, including trail restoration projects and advancing the goals of a watershed recreation management plan, which is being developed now.

There was quite a bit of discussion about recreation on the watershed land.

Earlier in the conversation, board member Ranjiv Khush said that the district said that an overarching goal of the whole strategic plan is for the district to ensure clean drinking water for the public.

Board member Larry Russell said that fact needs to be highlighted in the recreation goal, “so that people understand that while it’s great that we can get a multipurpose out of the watershed. It’s real value is as our drinking water supply.”

Residents who participated in the meeting said that the recreation component is an important part of the discussion.

Tom Boss, off-road director of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition, said that recreation on the land predates the creation of the water district.

“That’s why we have a legacy of recreation and a lot of popular hiking trails on the mountain,” he said.

Boss said that with over 2 million visitors in the watershed. “So we can’t ignore the fact that it’s a destination.”

The final objective under the stewardship umbrella is to maintain district facilities, including enhancing ranger residences and improving the Sky Oaks headquarters and other projects.

The board asked questions about how detailed the plan should be.

“In my experience, typically you want a strategic plan to fit in a strategy level and not necessarily detailed implementation,” said Ben Horenstein, the utility’s general manager.

Horenstein said the plan will help inform the district’s annual work plans, which will dive into the specifics of each bullet-point objective of the larger plan. The annual work plans are put together each spring, he said.

Board members said they’d like to see some sort of measurability built into the plan so that they can track progress on each goal.

“I don’t know if you necessarily have to quantify it, right? It doesn’t have to be a number, but we really should be able to measure it,” board member Jed Smith said.

Smith said in addition to emphasizing that the district’s mission is to ensure clean and safe drinking water, there is another overriding goal that should be discussed throughout the strategic plan.

“Even though fiscal responsibility is its own goal I’d like to see it in every part of our strategic plan,” Smith said.

Staff is expected to deliver a presentation on water supply reliability and fiscal responsibility at its Dec. 5 meeting.

Other discussions on the strategic plan are set for Dec. 19 and Jan 9. The draft strategic plan is expected to be available at the end of January.