Media & Policy Advisor

Joan Wells

Joan Wells matriculated at Stanford University in 1955, graduating with a degree in international studies. After graduation, she applied for entrance to the U.S. Foreign Service. She passed the written test and was invited for an in-person interview. She felt the interview went well, but at its conclusion one of the three men interviewing her suggested she should apply for a secretarial position if she wanted to work in the foreign service. She was disappointed, but not surprised, given the misogyny of the era.

Joan married her college sweetheart and relocated to Southern California, ultimately landing in Santa Barbara where they raised two daughters. As she turned her focus to family, Joan quickly realized she needed some challenges outside the home. She subsequently became active in the League of Women Voters.

“I’d always been interested in government, so I began to testify on land use issues before the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, representing the well-reasoned positions of the League,” Joan says. “I especially valued the seminars on political processes and strategies that the League sponsored. I learned a lot from them, especially on leading public meetings. Every member of a board should have a tutorial about being a good board member, and making sure all points of view are heard.”

One of Joan’s friends was David Yager, a Santa Barbara County supervisor; he invited Joan to apply as his nominee to the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission. She secured an appointment and served on the commission for the following 12 years, including four years as the commission’s chair.

Joan’s tenure with the planning commission ran from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, an era of big change in Santa Barbara. During her years with the commission, the local Coastal Plan was established. and Joan took an active role as the commission tackled multiple plans and policies involving land use, growth, conservation, air quality, seismic safety, housing, agriculture, and housing. She also chaired the Commission’s engagement with the oil industry in permitting onshore facilities associated with oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel, and she testified before the Department of Commerce when Exxon appealed the County’s permit denial based on the company’s refusal to meet County air quality standards. (The County prevailed.)

Over the years, Joan has served on the Board of Directors of the Citizens Planning Association of Santa Barbara County; as a board member and Chair for Planned Parenthood of the California Central Coast; and as Trustee and President of the Montecito Community Foundation. She was hired by the county to help formulate the Montecito Community Plan, and later served for a year as Chair of the county’s newly

formed Montecito Planning Commission.

Through it all, water policy was always one of her primary concerns.

“Frankly, I first became involved out of personal interest,” she said. “Santa Barbara County has always had water supply and access concerns. And the more I investigated, the more I realized that statewide mismanagement was a major factor in local water issues. Yes, our water supplies are limited – but the ways we are allocating and managing them have broad-reaching implications.”

Joan’s water activism began with service on the Riven Rock Mutual Water Company board. She was a governor’s appointee to the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, responsible for implementation of the federal Clean Water Act and the state Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act. As a board member she acted on waste discharge requirements, National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits, and enforcement issues.

Joan also served as co-chair of the No on State Water Committee of Montecito.

“We were opposed to bringing the State Water Project (SWP) to the Central Coast,” she says. “It was clear to us that the costs of connecting to the project would be burdensome for ratepayers and would do nothing to assure water security, given we’d be faced with the same supply strictures that have always plagued the SWP.”

The project was narrowly approved in the 1990s by Central Coast voters following a blitzkrieg of promotional media by the state, but the failings Joan and her colleagues predicted for the “Coastal Branch” pipeline soon materialized.

“From the start, the SWP has struggled to meet its promised allocations, and the debt burden on ratepayers is crushing,” she observes. “It quickly became obvious that the original engineering predictions of available water from California rivers were fundamentally flawed. “

That led Joan to join the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), which had been founded by her friends, neighbors and fellow activists, Carolee Krieger and Dorothy Green. Originally serving as a board member for C-WIN, she now works on media and policy strategies.

“I’m incredibly proud of my work for C-WIN,” Joan said. “We’ve made great strides in both public education and in the courts on inequitable, destructive, and unsustainable state water policy. It’s been a long fight, and it’s by no means over – but I think we may be at a tipping point. It’s increasingly clear to citizens, legislators, and regulators that things must change. And when that change comes, I know C-WIN will play a major role in driving it.”