Vote ‘no’ on Paso groundwater measures: Other options would be less costly
Pro/Con: Should voters approve formation of a Paso Robles groundwater basin management district?
Click here to read an argument for the district »
Sustainably managing the Paso Robles groundwater basin with a new water district is akin to calling the Army Corps of Engineers when all you need is a hand trowel. Here are the questions voters should be asking:
Supply side or demand management? At a recent candidates forum, most of the candidates for the proposed water board supported supply-side solutions for balancing the Paso basin. “Supply side” means people who live over the basin will pay for very expensive infrastructure projects (new water supply) to import very expensive water, forever.
There will be no going back and the residents will pay for projects whether or not water can be delivered, just like cities pay for Nacimiento water whether or not it’s delivered. The residential homeowners, who use only 3 percent of the water, will pay a disproportionate share of all the costs for the district and projects.
The Paso basin can be sustainably managed by very modest cutbacks in use by the large pumpers. Simply put, the pro-district campaigners don’t want to manage their pumping, and a handful of large landowners will determine what gets funded. The funding tax vote for all projects will be an acreage-based vote, which means that once the district is established, the projects will always be determined by large-acreage voters. Supply-side management will saddle a small residential population with expensive water projects, and a redundant layer of government, regulations and taxes.
How local is “local control?” The proposed district is not as local as you may think. Six of the nine director seats on the district board are elected based on one vote per acre. In the large acreage category of landowners, 24 percent of the votes are controlled by out-of-town landowners. In the medium acreage category, 20 percent of the votes are controlled by nonlocal landowners. In the small category, 23 percent of the votes are controlled by nonlocal landowners. Those are significant numbers and will be significant in determining who gets elected to manage the district. Many nonlocal landowners are scattered across the United States and many of those votes are controlled by large investment companies, corporations, LLCs and banks. The only real local control is one person-one vote by local residents.
Will the state take over? The Department of Water Resources (DWR) is tasked with writing guidelines for the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Since 2014 I have been a member of the NGO Collaborative, a coalition of large and small environmental and social justice organizations including Union of Concerned Scientists, the Nature Conservancy, Food and Water Watch, and the Sierra Club. I participated with these groups in several meetings with DWR, advising DWR on guidelines for implementing SGMA. DWR stressed that their role is to advise, mentor, provide resources and incentives for local agencies to manage basins. DWR would step in to direct a local agency in preparing a management plan only in the face of the most egregious and irresponsible behavior on the part of a county. As far as I know, no supervisor has publicly pledged to let the state take over any of the water basins in the county nor would the county invite the state to usurp their authority to manage those basins.
But if that happens, how expensive would state management be? Prior to the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) hearings on forming a district, I spoke with Rich Juricich at DWR to ask what his department might need if it were to take over management of a basin. The first priority and most expensive for DWR would be to prepare studies of the basin in order to prepare a management plan. Check — we have that. Second, set up CASEGEM groundwater monitoring process. Check — we have that. The county already has what is needed to plug in a management plan; no extra bureaucracy required and minimal costs. The Paso basin has decades of peer reviewed studies. In fact, agencies pumping from the Atascadero sub basin are already moving forward hiring a consultant to prepare a management plan at a fraction of the district’s five-year budget for plan compliance. The county or the state could do the same based on the same studies.
The proposed water district presents some serious “uh-ohs” for the county. SGMA requires that the entire basin be managed. The district boundary covers only a portion of the basin. The county will still be responsible for managing the part of the basin outside the district but the residential pumper inside the district, who uses only 3 percent of the water, will be paying 5 times their fair share of management costs.
The Paso basin needs management. We don’t need another layer of government to unfairly tax only some of the residents to manage the basin. Vote no on Measures A-16 and B-16.
Susan Harvey and her family live in the Creston area and rely on basin groundwater. She served on the Paso Basin Advisory Committee and the Water Resources Advisory Committee.
This story was originally published February 10, 2016 at 5:19 AM with the headline "Vote ‘no’ on Paso groundwater measures: Other options would be less costly."