The following letter was written in response to a San Jose Mercury News Editorial by the Honorable Zoe Lofgren, Member of Congress, 16th Congressional District.
To the editor:
When I read your editorial today calling for a candidate to run against Joe Judge who serves on the Santa Clara Valley Water District I realized that, as you admit, you have not covered the Water District proceedings adequately and therefore do not know the positive role that Judge has played over, yes, the last 21 years.
When you cite problems with the Executive Director as cause for Judge's replacement, I suppose that you did not know that Judge was the elected member who made the motion to remove Stan Williams and that he had been seeking a majority of elected board members to accomplish that for quite some time.
You rightly objected to the Board retroactively raising Williams' salary to increase his pension after they removed him. But Judge was the elected member who voted against doing that.
In the past, you have criticized the building of an expensive new headquarters for the water district. Only thing is, Judge also voted against that.
Joe Judge has taken the lead on many projects I have worked on that benefit the citizens of our Valley. When I served on the Board of Supervisors, I asked the Water District to participate in the Guadalupe River Park project. It took Joe Judge to convince the District to do so and the result, after, yes, several decades, is a flood control/park/conservation project our whole Valley can be proud of.
When the biggest drought hit, Judge was delegated the task of securing enough water for our Valley to avoid serious economic consequences. He accomplished what many thought could not be done and we avoided the economic dislocations that many of us feared would not be avoided.
As someone who works constantly to secure funding for flood control, I look to people who are knowledgeable, public spirited and reliable to help in implementing projects. Judge has been one of the main "go to" elected Members of the Water District Board.
Our flood control projects have not only protected billions of dollars of development, both business and residential, they have also produced a reduction in flood insurance rates.
In part because of Joe's leadership, our Water District is a leader in the state in exploring recycling of water as well as desalination as a hedge against the worst-case scenarios of global climate change. And, his work with the District has won support from the environmental community. He was a leader on the Water District Board for the proposition that we can provide flood control and still nurture wildlife and a natural environment.
Service on the Water District is a public service. There is no salary (although a per meeting stipend is provided). Some Board members travel extensively paid for by the public, but Judge is not among them.
In this case two decades of unheralded service to the public is a good thing. Especially so when the result is an in-depth knowledge of the arcane area of water policy in California. I think it would be a sad mistake to replace Joe Judge who knows what he is doing and has achieved so much for our county with a "water policy novice" ...especially so as we enter a very high stakes era for our county - where whether we have sufficient water resources to sustain our economy as well as our ecology is very much in question.
It's a cheap shot to think that someone who has labored well but in obscurity for two decades should be thrown out simply because of the length of their service. I can't imagine that replacing a thoughtful, experienced, knowledgeable public spirited person with someone who is just new will help our county navigate the really challenging and very complex water shortage situation that we are currently facing.
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren '08