Lewinger takes over as chair of CWA's Water Planning Committee

Fallbrook Public Utility District general manager Keith Lewinger, who is also FPUD’s representative on the San Diego County Water Authority board, began his two-year term as the chair of the County Water Authority’s Water Planning Committee at the CWA’s January 25 board meeting.

“I’m just honored that they asked me to do this, that the chairman asked me to do it,” Lewinger said. “It’s a critical committee at this board, and I think the committee is going to step up to the task. I’m just the chair. It’s the committee that’s going to do the work.”

Lewinger’s initial meeting as the actual committee chairman - he was the vice chair for 2005-06 and at times presided over the committee meetings in the absence of chair Ben Haddad - lasted approximately 35 minutes. During that time the committee adopted the final mitigated negative declaration for the Pipeline 4 relining project between Paint Mountain and Del Dios Highway, granted conditional approval of an annexation in the Lemon Grove area, authorized acceptance of a state Proposition 50 grant for a regional concentrate conveyance facilities feasibility study, certified a supplemental environmental impact report for the Lake Hodges emergency storage project which included approval of an interagency mitigation agreement with the San Dieguito River Park Joint Powers Authority for a temporary trails closure, authorized a new grant assistance program to facilitate studies and investigations of new local supply opportunities, and adopted a position of support for the 2007-08 legislative strategy of the U.S. Desalination Coalition.

“I just think it shows that we have a huge variety of major issues that are going to be coming before this committee,” Lewinger said. “We’ve got some challenging topics to address and some very important decisions to make.”

Lewinger had been the general manager of the Otay Water District before replacing Gordon Tinker as FPUD’s general manager in April 1999. After Tinker’s retirement he continued to represent FPUD on the CWA board for an additional two years until his retirement as a CWA director. Lewinger replaced Tinker on the CWA board in August 2001.

Lewinger was selected to chair the Water Planning Committee by 2007-08 CWA board chair Fern Steiner.