Paso Robles groundwater district vote is being watched closely statewide

Eyes all over California are trained on San Luis Obispo County to see what residents of the Paso Robles basin are going to do about managing their groundwater.

Recently, I was in Sacramento to testify to a Joint Oversight Committee of the State Legislature on behalf of the California State Association of Counties. I was assigned to deliver a progress report on county efforts statewide to implement the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), historic legislation passed in 2014 to protect our precious groundwater resources.

While listening to other witnesses and the reaction of the committee members, I learned something that surprised me: Many state legislators, agency staff members and other public groups and individuals are paying close attention to our efforts in the Paso basin.

They’ve been impressed with our county board majority’s willingness to take on the crisis — from our urgency and permanent ordinances requiring water-use offsets to our efforts to get a unique local water district considered by the basin’s voters. They think we are on the right track and hope that we will succeed.

At that hearing, I also heard again the clear-cut realities of our situation. Most importantly: If local agencies don’t manage their groundwater, the state will step in and local landowners will pay the bill. There was no debate or doubt about that.

State Water Resources Control Board staffers reported they are preparing a schedule of fees to recoup their costs, should they have to intervene. The staff also noted that they are prepared for more work and other fees in the future, where they, for instance, might need to restrict pumping in a basin. No one disputed that approach.

Everyone in the room understood the challenges we face going forward. The effort to reconcile competing local water agency interests has been time-consuming and, in many places, contentious. The state Department of Water Resources has provided facilitation services that have been well-received.

How to fund these essential management efforts is also a concern. The state has provided some start-up assistance, but SGMA is clear that in the long term, those who benefit from a groundwater resource will bear the management cost. Gaining voter approval for a funding measure (as required by Proposition 218) will require a thoughtful public discussion.

Promoting a thoughtful public discussion has its own challenges. Those I talked with were sympathetic when I described the denial and anger that we hear regularly in public commenters. Baseless conspiracy theories are easy to manufacture and commonly heard. And they must be refuted.

In various places, dealing with all these issues has been more difficult because of inaction or outright opposition by some elected officials. Implementing significant change takes political will, and such courage is essential now.

It’s human nature that accepting significant change is often difficult. But we must — individually and collectively, politically and financially — accept responsibility for our groundwater, sooner rather than later. As a representative of the California Farm Bureau Federation put it, “Unnecessary conflict is going to be everyone’s enemy.”

Accepting this responsibility is a matter of accepting reality. Specifically in the Paso Robles groundwater basin, reality is that residents and landowners there will need to fund the management effort, and not expect the county’s General Fund to cover it. Neither will money appear from somewhere else, as if by magic.

Similarly, reality is that the cost — as outlined in Measure A, now before basin voters — will be the same for the local hybrid water district as for the county’s Flood Control District. And, the cost of state intervention will assuredly be higher. There’s no cut-rate deal around.

Sacramento sees more than its share of inaction and dysfunction, but people I talked with there see our county as ahead of most as we deal with the Paso Robles basin. They realize it hasn’t been easy, but are impressed that we understand the realities and are trying to solve the problem locally. They are also well aware of the stakes should we fail.

One person summed it up by saying we are being watched intently as the “poster child — for good or bad.”

Folks in the Paso Robles basin have a chance to shape their own future by accepting their responsibility.

And California is watching.

This story was originally published February 29, 2016 at 2:32 PM with the headline "Paso Robles groundwater district vote is being watched closely statewide."