Category: Central Coast

When leaders in Los Osos California want to solve a perplexing problem, need to figure out the town’s complicated water shortage dilemma or make improvements benefiting the community, they turn to chief explainer Ron Munds, general manager at the Los Osos Community Services District  – the closest thing we have a city government in this unincorporated coastal community.

The 71 year-old Munds has been at the helm of the CSD since 2019 and now has told his board that he plans to retire next year. Last week, the board hired a consultant to start a search for a new general manager.

Ron Munds

A resident of Los Osos and CalPoly grad, Ron has no plan to leave the community. “We’ve lived here since 1975.” Munds says the CSD hopes to have a GM on board by April allowing Munds to help in the transition with his own contract up in August.

Arguably Munds is the go-to guy for all things water where he has formulated a strategy to use less groundwater – the only source of drinking water, pursue alternatives such as the use of more recycled water to irrigate our schools and parks and relocating water wells further east from the bay to reduce seawater intrusion. Perhaps his biggest project in the works now is connecting the community for the first time to an alternative source of new water – to the State Water Project that serves other nearby communities, including Morro Bay. Just in the past month the CSD board approved spending over $800,000 to launch the engineering of a 2.5 mile pipeline that will connect to the existing State Water project at So. Bay Blvd and Highway 1. Munds has also been active in seeking funding from both federal and state agencies to help out with the $10 million cost. The so-called Water Supply Resiliency Intertie Project could bring in 200 to 600 acre-feet of water annually. The basin uses about 1800 acre-ft of groundwater yearly, for now the only game in town.

Lesson from San Luis Obispo 

This is not Munds’ first rodeo working to convince a community they should depend less on groundwater despite the expense of an alternative source. Munds worked on a team at the City of San Luis Obispo that had been suffering multi-year droughts starting in 2012 and earlier. Munds and water officials convinced city residents to put up with more expensive water rates for several  years to help pay for what was to be the city’s salvation, constructing and  connecting to a 45-mile pipeline to Lake Nacimiento – now the city’s top water source. The city decided to turn off most of their water pumps after a lawsuit accused groundwater pumping of causing subsidence – land sinking causing property damage along LOVR. One 2015 news article summarized “About 25 years ago in San Luis Obispo, Calif., an over dependence on groundwater became a destructive and expensive problem for the city.”

Nacimiento Pipeline

Munds experience with water also includes a stint with  the County of San Luis Obispo as the Utilities Division Manager. He came to Los Osos with some 30 years of water management experience under his belt.

A strategy of long term conservation also plays a role in both SLO and Los Osos. San Luis Obispo’s water consumption has significantly decreased over the years, with a current annual usage of around 4,700 acre-feet compared to  the late 1980s at 8,000 acre-feet. In Los Osos there has been a drop in water pumping, while not as dramatic, falling from 2200 acre-ft in 2015 to 1690af in the latest 2024 Basin Management report. Still that is not enough.

Munds remembers advising the Los Osos CSD board when he came to work in 2019 of his long range plan to hook up the community  – as he did in SLO – to an outside source to cut down on year to year supply volatility and droughts.  He brought with him that plan knowing that like SLO – the much smaller Los Osos pipeline project would take time to become reality.”It’s already been underway for 6 and 1/2 years”, he notes. “The vision is long term. We need to look 40 years out “he observes. Munds hints he may work on the pipeline   project even after he steps down from the position in hopes to be under construction in a few years.

Munds frequently finds himself in the middle of the never-ending debate over growth, with the latest news – the controversy over whether water pumping in the community is allowing more seawater intrusion and what to do about it. Munds frequently offers the idea that the additional water  supply will be a” insurance policy” not a vehicle for lots of growth but quality of life issues – just”so you can count having a vegetable garden in your backyard.”

Recently the 35-year building moratorium here has been lifted following the approval of the Los Osos Community Plan. That plan allows for growth by addressing previous concerns about water supply, wastewater treatment, and habitat protection but  limits new construction to a 1% annual growth rate for residential units and less. It requires new development to connect to the water recycling facility.But now the Basin Management group made up of the three water purveyors including the CSD and the County have voted not to approve any growth in 2026 after a new study said seawater intrusion was underway.The County BOS alone will make the final decision.

An aside: if reduced  pumping on the land would push harder against the sea, the rise in worldwide seawater levels are a bigger problem even Munds can’t solve, although don’t tell him he can’t.

Not just water

The CSD and Ron Munds don’t just work on water issues. The agency also seeks more recreational and park land in the community and has been active in a proposal to buy the mothballed Sunnyside School property in an upcoming referendum. CSD has been playing a more active role in guiding improvements in town like pickleball courts given that the county has often disappointed residents and of course, right now faces budget issues of their own.

The CSD and Mr. Munds is also struggling with the high cost of firefighting and emergency services currently working on a plan of possibly coordinating the service with the City of Morro Bay.

Recently, the CSD and the county celebrated the connection of three local Los Osos schools and parkland to recycled water from the wastewater treatment plant that will now replace water wells that have been irrigating grounds at Los Osos Community Park, Monarch Elementary School and the Los Osos Middle School.Plans are in the works to add recycled water to the Los Osos Elementary School as well as the vacant Sunnyside School once it is acquired by a  community group led by the CSD, another one of those Ron Munds good deed projects.

Trusted partner

Los Osos community leader Deborah Howe, chair of the Los Osos Community Advisory Council says ” Ron is such an important partner for so many projects in the community.”

“He is trusted, caring and compassionate. I see him all over town including ringing the Christmas bells at the local grocery store to raise money for the hungry.”

“Working directly with him, Ron has been instrumental in the current effort to acquire Sunnyside school. Glad to hear he will still be part of our community.”

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Landslides closed Highway 1 along the world famous Big Sur coast, severing the flow of travelers, and reducing the amount of economic activity, mostly tourist spending, by roughly $312 million between 2023 and 2024 says the state agency Visit California and LA-based Beacon Economics in a recently published study.

Local city and county governments have lost over $27 million in tax revenue during these two years.

Meanwhile the highway remains closed today and is causing $13 to $14 million in economic losses per month, equaling a total of $438 million since the first slide occurred in January 2023.

Late March opening date

Now Caltrans just announced repairs to the road will be complete next year allowing the highway to open for thru traffic by the end of March 2026 assuming no new winter damage in coming months. Landslides have become a money pit for the state spending hundreds of millions of dollars as vigorous wet stormsand its location on fault lines have increased periodic damage to the cliffside highway.

Landslides closed Highway 1 in 2017 but the Covid shutdown also reduced traffic in 20/21 compounding the multi-year economic impacts in recent years.

On January 14, 2023, a major landslide buried a stretch of Highway 1 in Lucia, near Big Sur, on California’s central coast. Before Caltrans could repair the damage, a second major slide occurred six miles north of the first one. As of September 2025, a 6.8 mile stretch of the road remains closed, with reconstruction still underway.

The Beacon Economics study says the small towns of San Simeon and Big Sur experienced the steepest proportional losses. Over the two years, visitor spending at San Simeon dropped 42% relative to baseline expectations.

In 2022, tourists spent roughly $27 million in San Simeon. If the road had remained open, it’s expected this number would have risen slightly to $29M. Instead, nature buried the highway under half a million cubic yards of debris, and tourist spending dropped to $17 million in 2023 and $17 million in 2024.

Near San Simeon is Hearst Castle, a vast estate built by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst
between 1919 and 1947. Visitation at the castle—now a museum and California State Park—fell from 222,500
during the summer of 2022, to 184,000 during the summer of 2023.

For Big Sur, the road closure resulted in a total loss of $33 million in visitor spending, reflecting a decline of 20% from baseline expectations for 2023 and 2024. This was driven by their respective isolation and dependency on the Highway, and hotel managers in the area reported having to close segments of their businesses. In a news article the GM of the resort restaurant Nepenthe says they have about a third fewer customers than usual.

Monterey hard hit

In absolute terms, the City of Monterey is home to the largest tourism economy in the region, representing nearly
60% of total tourism spending annually. Similarly, the City of Monterey also endured the largest loss of visitor
spending, losing $145 million over the two years as compared to baseline expectations, says the report.

Likewise in San Luis Obispo County’s Morro Bay and Cambria, visitor spending dropped about 10% from where it was expected to be without the closures, says the study.

Rendering of Los Osos pipeline connecting to State water that comes in along Hwy 1

On September 4 the Los Osos CSD Board awarded a contract to Water Systems Consulting (WSC) for $854 thousand to design the proposed 2.5 mile pipeline intertie project connecting the community to State water at Hwy 1.

Currently the town is 100% dependent on groundwater.The bid from WSC is over $200,000 more than an engineer’s estimate used by the CSD in their planning. The consultant highlighted the complexity of the project.

At the July 10, 2025, board meeting, the board received a report which summarized the current condition of the Los Osos Groundwater Basin.The results of a new baseline scenario indicated that pumping at current average rates and spatial distribution would cause seawater to intrude further into the Basin which is an indication that current average pumping and distribution is “not sustainable.”

At the meeting, staff also provided a Water Resiliency Intertie Project conceptual strategy to enhance the long-term approach to improve the groundwater basin’s water quality and seawater intrusion issues and improve the resiliency of the community’s water supply.

A decision has now been made to move forward on a detailed design of the pipeline even though funding for construction is not yet in place. The theory is to make the project “shovel ready” by moving ahead on detailed design. helping to attract federal, state and local funding including from the purveyors.

Three year construction schedule

The company WSC’s design completion schedule is January 2027, considerably longer than two rival bids but “might be more realistic” says a CSD memo. Construction could be completed in Sept 2028 – three years from now.

“The proposed intertie pipeline alignment is nearly 16,000 linear feet (LF) from the Chorro Valley Pipeline north of Highway 1 to LOCSD’s 16th Street tanks. The alignment navigates a critical arterial road between the coastal communities, environmentally sensitive areas, two bridge crossings, and varied soil conditions. The project presents an opportunity for water supply sustainability and reliability while also presenting numerous challenges” writes WSC.

The pipeline is expected to bring 200 to 600 acre-ft a year into the basin. The urban areas of Los Osos use about 1,000 acre ft through the three water purveyors and the ag acreage east of town uses around 650 acre-ft from wells.

Ron Munds, CSD manager, says the additional supply would be sunk to help push back seawater and make the basin more sustainable.

Strong community support for the project is expected with new estimates that current pumping of groundwater is allowing seawater to intrude into the Los Osos water supply.