Front Page  »  

Group wants to charge for well water in rural Paso Robles

January 27, 2025

By KAREN VELIE

For more than a decade, a group of people have sought to require landowners over the Paso Robles water basin to pay a fee for water usage. Even though nearly 80% of impacted property owners voted against the proposed fees in 2016, large agricultural businesses have continued their pursuit of fees on residential properties.

In the ongoing David versus Goliath battle over water rights, the Paso Basin Cooperative Committee met on Jan. 22 to review a rate study developed by two water districts: Shandon San Juan Water District and Estrella El Pomar Creston. Staff from the water districts previously worked on the proposed rates in private.

Approximately 8% are large corporate irrigated landowners who use 90% of the basin water. Initially, the plan was to have only the large commercial land owners pay for water usage.

Their latest plan, however, is to charge everyone in rural areas with wells over the basin, including small residential properties.

The 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act did not change water law, it was put into place to stop over-pumping of the basin. Current water law allows small water users to pump water through wells on their property without charge.

In pushing the fees, proponents reported the Paso Basin as “critically overdrafted,” However, the judge in a quite title lawsuit ruled the basin is not in critical overdraft, and instead had a minimal overdraft approximately 40 years ago.

In order to collect fees, the five Groundwater Sustainability Agencies will need to establish a Joint Powers Authority.

 


Loading...
Subjects:     
Related:


18 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Economics may solve our water problem as the wine industry is on a slippery downward slope with demographics working against them. The inventory will all become 2 buck chuck in the next year no matter how chichi you think that wine is.


0

I didn’t know wine was agriculture. I thought agriculture fed people.


What if they were considered a luxury use?

Maybe they would sell their vineyards and move away.


We need more Mexican restaurants to keep up with all the bad wineries.


1

Wineries and agriculture; yes. Rural home owners with less than 1 acre of agriculture? NO.


18

Salinas river dried up coinciding with vineyard growth in SLO and never has recovered after 2008, there hasn’t been a single steelhead since. Fake cowboy vineyard owners up here in Paso, Richie’s. Scum..


16

That can’t be true, otherwise the California Fish and Wildlife would have put a stop to excessive pumping and or would have required the Live Stream to be maintained by releasing water from the Salinas Reservoir (Santa Margarita Lake). You know we pay taxes to fund them, and they are all about wildlife conservation, RIGHT?


5

They are a joke. Just recently “decided”(were bribed) to allow horse use in a local reserve that’s banned horses for 30 years :/ Conservation comes second to cash for CA Fish and Wildlife.


8

We have a new Warden, we’ll see if atrocities are remedied. Until then, it is the civil courts, at your expense instead of theirs, excepting the absolute requirement to pay F&W for tags to kill.


1

The Salinas has always been known, as the worlds longest backward underground river. While it would be fun to blame it on the wineries, it has never been a year-round above ground stream.


The Salinas Dam is the only reason the upper, Santa Margarita region flows water all year.


1

Where would this money go? And for that, will they come out and repair my system when it goes down?


32

The Water Banking Resnicks have their greedy fingerprints all over this.


37

Life in the Middle West, just do the math.


0

Gosh. I just can’t imagine that 200 wineries, heavily irrigating over 40,000 acres of vineyards, has somehow saved the basin from being emptied, when it turns out that Bob down the road keeping his grass green is the problem.


**/sarcasm–off**


57

And if we can’t stop the rich, and the Gov, like Ian Parkinson and Ty Lewis, I say; Fk it all. And the courts, you mean; “the racket”. I say, Fk it all.


-21

Let me guess the Resnick’s are at it again?


49

Yeah, and no one will or can stop them unless Mario has another Brother.


3

Where to start? The rate study, paid for by grant funding from the State, was initiated by the five agencies that make up the Paso Basin Cooperative Committee. Nobody has been working on this in private; it is the paid rate study consultant who has developed different options on extraction rates. The vote addressed not extraction fees specifically, but the idea of one unified water district to represent all the landowners in the Basin. Neither of the water districts, both part of the PBCC, has “continued their pursuit of fees on residential properties” but in fact has supported other options. The County has lately been bringing the landowners it represents (including rural residents and large ag producers) into the know by finally giving them information and encouraging them to participate in the management of the Basin, management which is required by State law. Under that and other State laws, the water rights of all users cannot be infringed but the fact that all users benefit from the resource means they all have to participate in paying for that management, again required by law. And the proposed rate structure options would not include payment by rural landowners based on their extraction, but based on the average use of a rural holding, and amounting to less than $20.00 per year in the proposed rate study options.


-14

It’s crazy 90 percent of water is used by essentially 10 percent: Rich People Folks; and they want everyone to pay the same. No thanks Elon or George Sorors best friend Trump’s new Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. Because Soros bought off Trump and confused voters and made them hill billies and hippies fight over Fake News.


-17

$20.00 yea right by then end of implementation it will just grow exponentially once passed.


18