The president of the Marin Water board fielded tough questions last week about the district’s options for addressing drought and climate change, one of which would flood ranches next to Soulajule Reservoir. Chiefly: Had the board fully considered the impact that tripling the Hicks Valley reservoir’s size would have on families who have been operating ranches there for generations? “I’m just wondering if the board is fully cognizant of the effect that this would have on these families and whether the board really cares,” said Sally Gale, a rancher and chair of the Marin Resource Conservation District, which hosted an informational session with water board president Ranjiv Khush last week. “We have empathy,” Mr. Khush replied. “You know, we’re individuals that try our best to understand all the repercussions of the decisions we’ve made.” Marin Water wants to increase its storage capacity by 25 percent by 2035, and it’s considering a variety of ways to achieve that goal, including increasing the capacity of its seven reservoirs. The board has identified three potential storage options: expanding the Soulajule; building a new reservoir across the road from the existing one in Nicasio; and expanding Kent Lake. The first two options would flood ranchlands; the third would not. But a consulting firm hired by the district concluded that expanding the Soulajule would be the least expensive choice at $300 million—half the cost of the other options. Neighbors of the Soulajule believe the engineers vastly underestimated the cost by excluding several factors, including the cost of acquiring private land, building a new pipeline and electrifying a pump station. “The estimate should have included these built-in costs,” said Carol Dolcini, whose Hicks Valley ranch would be flooded by an expansion. “It should have been at least $600 million.” Mr. Khush said all three options remain on the table and stressed that district staff have not finished investigating all the ramifications of each. “There are a lot of gaps to be filled in the feasibility study,” he said. “The board knows this.” He said the district is expecting to select a preferred option by the end of the year, but will do its due diligence before reaching a decision. “We’ve tried to understand the impacts of what we’re doing, and anything we do will obviously have some negative impacts,” he said. “There will be some hard decisions that we’re going to have to make.” The Marin Agricultural Land Trust has conservation easements for the Dolcini and Barboni ranches, the two ranches that would be most directly impacted by a Soulajule Reservoir expansion. “There has been a significant public investment of dollars into these agricultural lands from federal, state and local sources to protect them in perpetuity,” said Lily Verdone, the executive director of MALT, who Zoomed into the meeting last Wednesday. “The public has engaged and said we believe that these are really important, critical places to protect.”