Local News in Brief : Countywide : Ex-EMA Chief Named Water District Director

H. George Osborne, the former head of the county’s powerful Environmental Management Agency, has been named to the board of directors of the Orange County Water District.

Osborne, a Fullerton resident and longtime advocate of water and energy conservation, fills the board vacancy created by the retirement of Robert L. Clark.

The 10-member water board oversees operations of the district, which is the county’s largest water wholesaler, delivering water to retail agencies serving more than 1.5 million county residents. The district also owns more than six miles of the Santa Ana River in north Orange County, where groundwater recharging of the aquifer is the cornerstone of local efforts to conserve water supplies.

Osborne is far from a newcomer to the local water industry. For 24 years, he worked in the county’s Flood Control District, and then in 1974 was named the first director of the newly created Environmental Management Agency by county supervisors. He resigned from the post in 1980, but a year later he became the executive director of the Santa Ana Flood Protection Agency, a 24-member, joint-powers agency formed to lobby for a series of multimillion-dollar flood control improvements on the river.