The Montecito Water Security Team is as green as it gets. Our sole objective is to achieve a sustainable, reliable, and resilient supply of water for our entire community. Our strategies include recycled wastewater for irrigation for at least the cemetery and large properties such as golf courses and hotels, which preserves potable supply. For over a decade, both the Sanitary and Water Board incumbents have pointed at each for the failure to bring this basic supply to Montecito while water continues to be wasted and dumped into the ocean. The environment and Montecito have been paying the price for their behavior.

We find it curious that The Independent has gone to great lengths to carry the water for two Republican incumbents at the Sanitary District that have raised rates 37% and insist on a $3.5M dollar building ahead of a recycling facility. Did anyone object when State Senator Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) introduced legislation in 2016 to “Stop Dumping Treated Water into the Ocean”? What about Heal the Ocean’s mission to end “ocean dumping”? Or Melinda Burns’ 2017 article that the “South Coast wastewater stream – about 11 million gallons per day – is treated, piped offshore and dumped into the ocean?”

The Sanitary District has inappropriately spent public funds to campaign and has even enlisted the State to purportedly help. This unprecedented action has been correctly challenged as illegal campaigning at the taxpayer’s expense.

Many residents have contributed time and money to our campaign, as have we. Without this, no one would be talking about dumping wastewater off Butterfly Beach, recycling, or the Water District incumbent’s planning failures for over a decade. Montecito and Summerland deserve a new slate to move our community forward.

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