Steve Collins resigns from Monterey County Water Resources Agency post
Jim Johnson
Monterey County Herald
04/13/2011
Steve Collins, a director of the Monterey County Water Resources Agency, has resigned on the heels of questions about a potential conflict of interest involving the proposed regional seawater desalination project. The county will conduct an investigation into the agency's involvement with the proposed project.
Collins sent a letter of resignation dated April 11 to Board of Supervisors chairwoman Jane Parker, saying he decided to step down after discussing it with Grower-Shipper Association president Jim Bogart on Friday. Collins had served 16 years on the water board and was the Grower-Shipper representative.
In the letter, he "categorically" denied "all allegations" made against him, and said he had committed "no act that would discredit the Association." But he said he felt he had become "such a distraction" that continuing his service on the board would be detrimental to the agency's work and the desalination project.
On Tuesday, the supervisors directed County Counsel Charles McKee to hire outside counsel to investigate the water resources agency's work and analysis on the desalination project.
According to Parker, the board decided it needed to discover and review all the facts surrounding the role of the agency, including Collins, in the project, and wanted an independent investigation of the matter.
Parker said it would likely be at least "a month or two" before any report could be ready, and said she expects the board will try to make as much of
it public as possible.
"The board and the public is very interested in the results of this investigation," she said. "This is potentially a very big deal."
Collins advocated for, and testified regularly in regard to, the proposed desalination project while it was under review by the state Public Utilities Commission last year. At the same time, he earned about $150,000, by his own reckoning, for work on behalf of the project for RMC Water and Environment, which later was hired as project manager for the proposal.
