Warding off water wars

September 7, 2011

EDITOR’S NOTE: See Adjudication in Action and a groundwater supply and demand chart at the bottom of this story.

By LISA RIZZO

People in northern San Luis Obispo County are running out of water—some faster than others. And, unless a community effort to stabilize the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin is successful, it could mean letting a judge decide who has a right to the water inside and how much.

Senior Planner with the San Luis Obispo County Department of Planning and Building James Caruso says the health of the basin, which lies beneath 790 square miles of land from Santa Margarita to just north of the Monterey County line, is in jeopardy.

“The situation is critical,” Caruso says.

The Paso Robles Groundwater Basin is the primary water supply for northern San Luis Obispo County, providing water for 29 percent of the county’s population and an estimated 40 percent of its agriculture, according to the county’s most recent management plan.

For thousands of people, including many in rural Paso Robles, Templeton, Creston, Shandon, and Garden Farms to San Miguel, it is the only source of residential water. It’s a supply that is rapidly declining, hydrogeologists from Todd Engineers and Furgo West report.

The county says “pumping of groundwater from the basin has reached or is quickly approaching the basin’s perennial yield” of 97,700 acre-feet of water for 2011, the maximum amount deemed safe to withdraw before groundwater levels drop further.

Water consumption beyond the safe yield also means overdraft conditions, a point where the basin is no-longer sustainable, or able to naturally replenish itself. Essentially the clock is ticking.

A community volunteer effort, led by San Luis Obispo County and the City of Paso Robles, is underway to resolve the groundwater crisis.

Chairman of the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin Steering Committee Larry Werner says many stakeholders are left with no choice but to put their issues aside and help develop an implementable plan to successfully resolve the chronic basin conditions or face war in court.

“We have a problem here, but we can solve it because we have the force to do it,” he says.

Digging deep

More than 8,000 private and commercial wells now tap into the basin, according to the County Public Health Department, Division of Environmental Health. Growth within the last decade, particularly the wine boom, has caused groundwater levels in those wells to drop from 10 feet to more than 70 feet depending on the location, according to county charts and planners.

One homeowner, Sue Luft, has been monitoring her well’s water level since it was drilled in the El Pomar area east of Templeton in 1998. Luft says she has seen the water level drop by 87 feet in just 13 years.

“Pumping is greater than the basin can handle,” she said.

A major community effort to stabilize the basin must be made, Luft said. Or else, “It will make our property worthless.”

Dozens of rural landowners each year are forced to drill new wells due to dropping water levels, setting them back at a minimum $20,000 expense per well and as much as $200,000 for an agricultural well, according to local drilling companies.

While the new wells revived some residents’ water sources it also led them to foreclosure.

Miller Drilling Company Manager Kurt Bollinger in Templeton said several of the properties near Highway 46 and Jardine Road in Paso Robles that the company re-drilled wells for in recent years are now bank-owned. The expense of digging for more water helped put the homeowners upside down on their mortgages, Bollinger said.

The worst may be yet to come for many landowners. Any water well more than 20 to 30 years old will likely need to be re-drilled, said managers from Cal West Rain and Miller Drilling Company.

The current groundwater levels have doubled the depth needed to drill for new wells in the North County. A minimum 700-foot-well is required now, far surpassing the old 300-foot standard, they say.

In addition, the City of Paso Robles has regularly faced seasonal water supply problems when existing wells do not adequately meet peak water demands, so it has been forced to find supplemental water supply sources to service its residential and commercial water users.

Overdraft: To be or not to be

Response to inquires into whether the basin is already in overdraft varies depending on who is asked.

The basin goes into overdraft this year, according to “Scenario 1” in the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin Resource Capacity Study (RCS), identified by Caruso as the “most likely” situation.

Some critics, mostly from the wine industry, dispute the results because of numerous variables, estimations and gaps in available data.

The county has not declared overdraft, despite the four-year study which overall found the situation is dangerously close.

But last fall, the Board of Supervisors approved the RCS, its findings and recommendations, and established the highest measure of severity, a Level III under the county resource management system.

Then in February, the supervisors confirmed that the groundwater levels are dropping throughout the basin and that pumping has reached or is quickly approaching its “perennial yield.” They did not say the basin was in overdraft.

The basin, however, could be in overdraft long before the government makes the declaration. That’s because to county attorneys and management, overdraft is a “naughty word”—one that they cannot currently use because it would declare a start to a legal war, known as adjudication.

The county is leery because history has shown adjudication is a process that takes water decisions out of the hands of the users and in the hands of the court.

When a groundwater basin is in overdraft, water users can file legal action asking the judicial system to establish groundwater rights. If a lawsuit is brought on to adjudicate the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin, the court would determine which well owners could extract water and how much.

Two San Luis Obispo County groundwater basins are already in adjudication: the Los Osos Groundwater Basin and the Santa Maria Groundwater Basin.

After 12 years, the Santa Maria adjudication is still tied up in appeals, has exceeded $11 million in total costs, and has yet to be completed.

County planner Caruso says he believes overdraft and adjudication for the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin are not a matter of if, but when.

Keeping “peace”

There is essentially a treaty currently in place to prevent this costly legal war over water from starting, yet. It is called the Paso Robles Imperiled Overlying Rights Agreement (PRIOR).

Knowing the threat of adjudication loomed in the near future, municipal users and several major North County landowners entered into a 10-year agreement in August 2005.

The local government promised not to declare overdraft if the landowners agreed not to file legal action to establish a priority of their groundwater rights over the municipal users, according to the PRIOR legal contract. In exchange, the landowners agreed to cooperate with any groundwater management plan and encourage other water well owners to do so.

The PRIOR contract expires in less than three years on Jan. 1, 2014, unless it is renewed. The county says it does not plan to declare overdraft in the meantime, even if the basin is in-fact in overdraft. Caruso says it would be an end to voluntary cooperation and a start to litigation.

In the fall of last year, some county employees say they mistakenly “slipped” and used the word overdraft to describe the basin’s status in staff reports. Local media printed it, upsetting many water users and municipal suppliers and fueling further controversy.

Now public officials are more careful to avoid the word, on the record, and the stakeholders are working to build cooperation rather than controversy.

Uncertain future

County planners are working to help people understand the severity of the water crisis but their power to fix the problem is limited, they say.

The cities and county cannot legally restrict how much water a landowner pumps because it is a California constitutional property right, despite some residents who beg the county to control consumption from the majority (67 percent) consumer of the groundwater, farmers and grape growers.

In addition, there is no legal ability to stop more vineyards from being planted because of limitations in the permitting process and the fact that it would conflict with the county general plan.

Grape growers argue that they have proven to be efficient users of water, showing successful conservation efforts and many cases of sustainable farming over the last several years. But growth continues.

The City of Paso Robles, which in 2010 needed 6,326 acre-feet of water, 2,338 from the basin and 3,988 from the Salinas River, has contracted to import 4,000 acre-feet per year of Lake Nacimiento water, according to a city plan.

Once a treatment plant to process the lake water is constructed, anticipated to begin in 2015, the city projects the new water source will relieve part of the burden on the basin until demand increases.

Paso Robles plans to acquire an additional 1,400 acre-feet per year of Nacimiento water beginning in 2020, according to the Paso Robles 2010 Urban Water Management Plan.

While the city says Nacimiento water can never be a primary source rather supplemental because it is not a guaranteed supply and relies on uncertain factors, critics in the agricultural industry say they want the city to consider buying more of the 6,000 acre-feet of lake water still up for grabs and use basin water as little as possible. Many city residents oppose that plan, arguing they should not be burdened with higher water costs to support the wine industry’s water demand.

Water conservation programs have been expanded, including the formation of a steering committee—a volunteer group of stakeholders to help the development and community implementation of a management plan intended to stabilize the basin.

In August, the Paso Robles City Council delayed adoption of the new Groundwater Basin Management Plan partly due to controversy over one of the plan’s priorities to monitor groundwater levels through private wells—resistance stemming from grape growers who do not want their water consumption to become public record, the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance says.

Through community outreach, government officials have been stressing the need to monitor water levels to fill gaps in their data and measure any success of basin stabilization efforts. About 175 wells are in the network and adding just 20 in strategic locations would increase the value of the information, the county said at a recent steering committee meaning. They promise confidentiality, stressing private well data would only be used for government studies and reports.

Some stakeholders are optimistic that if they achieve widespread cooperation the community can resolve the water crisis by avoiding adjudication and stabilizing the basin. But some, like Management Plan Steering Committee member Steve Sinton, say the county needs to focus more on solutions rather than monitoring the problem, water levels.

“Think of it as if we are on a ship that is sinking. Getting information on how fast we are sinking is not going to stop us from sinking,” Sinton said at the Aug. 25 steering committee meeting.

What the stakeholders can all agree on is the goal—solving the problem, committee chairman Werner says.

And while the future is unknown, one thing is for certain, Caruso says.

“Solutions to this problem will take collaboration and cooperation from all parties. Anything short of that—we will not see success.”

 

 

Adjudication in action

If the effort to stabilize the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin fails and San Luis Obispo County declares the water supply in overdraft, a lawsuit over water rights would likely follow and lead to adjudication.

Adjudication is a process in which a court determines the groundwater rights of all overliers, property owners above the groundwater basin. A judge would rule who the extractors are and how much water they can pump.

There are 22 adjudicated groundwater basins in California; 21 were undertaken in State Superior Court and one in federal court, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

The most recent case comes from San Luis Obispo County, the adjudication of the Santa Maria Valley Basin which spans from Pismo Beach south to Orcutt, and into the valley.

The case has been ongoing for 12 years and has exceeded $11 million in total expenses, according to the County of San Luis Obispo.

South County resident knew they had a water crisis on their hands when wells began to fail, pumps burnt out, and people ran out of water.

Overdraft could not be proven with certainty but the court recognized an even greater threat—pumping depressions that could pull in sea water and jeopardize the water supply.

The Santa Maria Valley Water Conservation District brought on a lawsuit against the City of Santa Maria and a slew of other defendants to assert its water right over the others.

A Santa Clara County Judge issued a ruling on the case in 2005 based on an agreement between most of the stakeholders.

One defendant with water rights at stake is the Nipomo Community Services District. District director Mike Winn says adjudication has cost South County residents time and money.

“When you get sued, generally you need to countersue,” Winn said. “There are hundreds of litigants now.”

More than $3 million in adjudication expenses is being passed on to the Nipomo Community and the fight is not over, Winn said. Some farmers, unhappy with the ruling, are appealing the judgment.

Part of the solution to their groundwater crisis is to bring in additional sources of water to compensate for empty depressions in the ground which hydro-geologists expect to cause even bigger problems within the next 10-15 years.

Winn says the new water is essential for the South County because sea water has already “poisoned a number of wells.”

“When you are docking a boat you don’t wait until you get to the dock to turn off the engine,” Winn said. “The supplemental water project is a desire to get ahead of the curve.”

Some people are still not wanting to cooperate, despite the court ruling. Winn says some of them are apathetic, being that they are of retirement age, so they don’t expect the crisis to climax in their lifetime.

“We have serious water problems on the Mesa but people are going around saying there is not, so they don’t have to pay for anything,” he said.

“The problem is very very real.”

 

 

Groundwater supply and demand

The annual supply of water available in the Paso Robles Groundwater basin is 97,700 acre-feet (AFY), also referred to as the “perennial yield,” according to the Furgo 2002 and 2005 technical studies.

The Resource Capacity Study includes estimations of water demand in acre feet for several years:

[Chart courtesy of San Luis Obispo County Planning and Building Department]

Groundwater User	1997	2000	2006	2009
Net Agriculture	49,683	56,551	58,680	63,077
Urban	13,513	14,629	15,665	16,382
Rural	9,400	9,993	10,891	11,817
Small Community	—	—-	594	—-
Small Commercial	1,465	1,465	2,323	2631
Total AFY	74,061	82,638	88,153	93,907