California has had three major droughts in the past 15 years. The most recent ended in 2023, with drenching winter storms.
But the work to prepare for the next inevitable drought, along with potentially devastating floods like the one on Coyote Creek that caused $100 million in damage in 2017, continues at Silicon Valley’s largest water district.
Three of the seven seats on the board of the Santa Clara Valley Water District are up for re-election this fall. The district, based in San Jose, is a government agency that provides drinking water and flood control to 2 million people in Santa Clara County. Its directors serve four-year-terms, and earn about $60,000 a year.
One of the largest government agencies in Santa Clara County, the district has a budget of $964 million and 979 employees.
It has recently struggled financially, instituting a hiring freeze, filling 107 of its jobs with interns and temporary workers, and seeing of its two huge projects — the seismic repair of Anderson Dam near Morgan Hill, and a proposal to build a huge new reservoir near Pacheco Pass — more than double in cost to $2.3 billion and $2.8 billion.
In two of the seats, incumbents Dick Santos, a retired San Jose fire captain, and Nai Hsueh, a civil engineer who worked at the water district for three decades, are running unopposed.
In the other race, to succeed retiring board member Barbara Keegan, two candidates are facing off.
They are Shiloh Ballard, a former senior vice president at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and former member of the San Jose City Planning Commission, and Bill Roth, a marketing consultant who has worked for 30 years for a variety of Silicon Valley companies, including BEA Systems, Sun Microsystems and VMware.
Ballard, 49, said her top priorities are securing water supplies as climate change worsens by expanding recycled water, boosting funding for voluntary conservation programs like paying homeowners to replace lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping, and improving efficiency at the water district, whose board members have faced controversies and internal battles in recent years.
“This is a good agency,” she said. “I want it to be a more high functioning agency.”
“I’ve worked with the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, the VTA, every agency,” she added. “And the water district is among the most slow and bureaucratic. Getting a contract signed with the open space authority is easy. With the water district they say ‘we have to do 10 different processes before we can proceed to the next step.’ The district needs to do project delivery much more quickly, which can help bring down water costs.”
Shiloh Ballard is running for Santa Clara Valley Water District, Seat 2 in Nov., 2024. (Photo Courtesy of Shiloh Ballard) (Photo courtesy of Shiloh Ballard)
Ballard’s most recent job was as executive director of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition from 2015 to 2023. She worked at the Silicon Valley Leadership group from 2000 to 2015, and before that was a staff member for former State Sen. Byron Sher, D-Palo Alto. She formerly served on the board of the League of Conservation Voters and the Housing Trust of Silicon Valley. She also was a member of the San Jose City Planning Commission from 2015 to 2021.
Ballard has been endorsed by Keegan, along with most of the region’s top elected officials, including San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former mayor Sam Liccardo, congressmembers Zoe Lofgren, Ro Khanna, and Anna Eshoo, and the South Bay Labor Council, Planned Parenthood, the Democratic Party and the League of Conservation Voters.
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Her opponent, Roth, currently serves on the board of Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County, and was a board member of Sacred Heart Community Service from 2018 to 2023. His endorsements include former San Jose vice mayor Chappie Jones; Carlos Rosario, president of the Santa Clara County Black Lawyers Association; and the Nor Cal Carpenters Union.
Among his top priorities, he said, are looking out for low-income residents.
“I’m running for the water district in order to keep water rates low, and deal with the homelessness issue on the creeks humanely,” he said.
The district could reduce water rates if it held less cash than the $700 million it has on hand now, he said. And rather than simply sweeping homeless encampments out of area creeks, it should hire four outreach workers to connect homeless people with drug and alcohol treatment programs, job training services, food and other existing programs in the county, he said.
Roth, 59, has worked for more than a decade with Amigos for Christ, a group based in Georgia, that has built more than 20 water systems in impoverished communities in Nicaragua.
“I’ve seen kids get healthier,” he said. “I’ve seen them blossom. That motivates me.”
Bill Roth is running for Santa Clara Valley Water District 2 in Nov., 2024. (Photo Courtesy of Bill Roth)
Both Roth and Ballard are members of the water district’s environmental advisory committee. They are running to represent District 2, which includes parts of Santa Clara, downtown San Jose, Willow Glen, the Rose Garden and Alum Rock.
Both say they are skeptical of the district’s plans to continue moving forward with studies of building Pacheco Dam, a 140,000-acre foot project proposed for an area between Highway 152 and Henry Coe State Park. The project’s costs have ballooned over geological issues. The district recently lost a lawsuit from environmental groups over inadequate environmental studies, and no other Bay Area water agencies are volunteering to help fund it.
There is currently a 4-3 majority on the board to continue planning for the project, with Santos, Varela, Hsueh and Tony Esteremera in favor and Keegan, Rebecca Eisenberg and Jim Beall either formally opposed, leaning against or raising major questions.
The district has had some success with projects recently, including nearing completion on a huge new outlet tunnel at Anderson Reservoir, and breaking ground on the final phase last month of a $241 million project to improve flood protection along 13 miles of Llagas Creek in Morgan Hill and Gilroy.