HomeMy WebLinkAbout06 15 2026 - Item 8.1 - Georgine Scott-CodigaPUBLIC COMMENT — AGENDA ITEM 8.1
To: City Clerk, City of Gilroy, for the record of the June 15, 2026 City Council meeting
Re: Urban Water Management Plan Update — Undisclosed Basis for Table 7-2A
Revisions and Withheld AKEL Engineering Final Technical Memorandum (November
2022)
From: Georgine Scott-Codiga, Americans for Transparency (AFNPT@proton.me)
This Council is being asked tonight to adopt an update to the City’s Urban Water Management
Plan. I am asking the Council not to do so until two specific, document-based questions are
answered.
1. The AKEL Engineering memo — named on tonight’s own agenda — has not been
produced.
The Water Supply Assessment for Project AS 20-23 (Appendix O to the certified EIR), at page
5-8, states: “The adequacy of the City’s domestic water, sewer, and recycled water system’s
capacity to integrate the Project was modeled and evaluated in AKEL Engineering’s Final
Technical Memorandum of the Gilroy Data Center Analysis (AKEL Engineering Group,
November 2022).”
That memorandum is the stated technical basis for the City’s finding that its water, sewer, and
recycled water systems can absorb this project. It is not posted on the City’s project website. I
submitted a Public Records Act request for it on May 21, 2026. I have not received it. And
tonight’s own agenda, under Item 8’s “Site Records,” lists this same AKEL memorandum as a
document related to the water plan now before you.
Under CEQA Guidelines §15150, when an environmental document incorporates another
document by reference as the basis for its analysis, that document must be available for public
review. A document the City’s own EIR cites as the basis for a capacity finding — that the City’s
own agenda names tonight — but that has not been produced to the public or in response to a
CPRA request filed nearly a month ago, means the public cannot verify the basis for that
finding. I am not asking the Council to evaluate AKEL’s conclusions tonight. I am asking the
Council to recognize that no one outside the City has been able to see them.
2. The data underlying Table 7-2A has changed, and the City has not explained why.
Table 7-2A — the Llagas Subbasin supply-and-demand budget — appears in both the WSA
that supported this project’s water capacity finding and in tonight’s draft UWMP update, and the
numbers are materially different. The WSA’s version, sourced to a supply document from
August 2021, shows a subbasin surplus of only 354 acre-feet per year in 2025 and 702 acre-
feet per year in 2030 — a system running at 99% of capacity. Tonight’s draft UWMP, sourced to
an updated supply document from March 2026, shows a surplus of 3,863 acre-feet per year by
2030 — 92% of capacity. The difference is driven almost entirely by a roughly 3,000 acre-foot
reduction in projected demand from “Other Users.”
This project’s approved water demand — 23 acre-feet per year — was found adequate against
a margin of 354 to 702 acre-feet. That margin has now more than quintupled in one planning
cycle, based on a revision to a category of demand the City does not control and has not
explained. Before this Council adopts new subbasin figures that will become the water-
availability baseline for every future project in this city — not just this one — the public is entitled
to know what changed in the “Other Users” projection, why, and on what document.
What I am asking the Council to do tonight:
1. Decline to adopt the UWMP update until the AKEL Engineering Final Technical
Memorandum (November 2022) — already named on tonight’s agenda as a Site Record
— is produced to the public;
2. Direct staff to disclose the source document(s) and methodology underlying the revised
“Other Users” demand projection in Table 7-2A, and explain how that revision relates to
the much narrower margin the AS 20-23 water capacity finding actually relied on; and
3. Recognize that both of these unresolved questions bear directly on whether the City can
currently demonstrate its data center water review framework is sound — a point I will
address further under Item 9.4.
The City cannot ask the public to approve a new water baseline while withholding the document
that justified the old one, and while leaving unexplained a fivefold change in the margin that the
City’s only approved data center was measured against.
Respectfully submitted,
Georgine Scott-Codiga
Americans for Transparency
AFNPT@proton.me