The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors last week said insufficient resources were the reason to reject a proposed ordinance that sought to regulate water extraction and commercial sales by water haulers and private companies in the county.
The issue has long been disputed among local homeowners, cannabis growers and local environmental organizations and led to an ordinance first sponsored by Supervisors John Haschak and Glenn McGourty in March 2022 and created by an ad hoc group of county residents – about eight to 10 people.
The ordinance, which would have regulated the amount of groundwater extracted and sold by water haulers to alleviate its impact on homeowners’ water supplies, was denied by all of the supervisors except one, Haschak.
“I wanted to keep working on the ordinance and figure out some sort of plan,” Haschak said in an interview.
But Supervisor Ted Williams said Mendocino County simply doesn’t have the resources to plan and implement enforcement of the new regulations.
“This county has a history of creating ordinances that it can’t enforce,” Williams said.
Water extraction, selling and hauling are contentious issues in Mendocino County and other rural North Coast communities due to ongoing water scarcity. During California’s prolonged drought of 2020 to 2022, Mendocino County was among the hardest-hit areas, forcing some local businesses to temporarily close due to low water supplies.
Outside water haulers are private entities or individuals who transport bulk water, typically using large trucks, to residents who are extremely low in their water supplies. In Mendocino County, they often supply water to businesses and agricultural operations, including cannabis growers, during dry seasons or drought conditions.
Water haulers sometimes get their supply from water agencies and other sources, such as rivers and streams. While many haulers are permitted by the county and state to conduct these operations, some obtain water from unpermitted wells or rivers, which can harm local sources and contribute to the depletion of other residents’ water. Water extraction and hauling can also damage rural parts of the county, where narrow, sensitive dirt roads lack the capacity to handle large trucks coming in and out of residential areas.
Additionally, according to Ellen Drell, director of the Willits Environmental Center and a member of the ad hoc group, some residents and cannabis growers have been extracting water from their wells and selling it to others in the county without any oversight, usually to make extra cash.
“A lot of the reasons are connected to money. The main incidents I’ve heard of are in Covelo, where it was happening on a scale that has concerned local residents,” Drell said.
Because of these ongoing operations, residents can see their wells run dry if neighbors are extracting and hauling large amounts of water elsewhere.
The proposed ordinance would have included regulations addressing water extraction and sales to outside buyers and their impact on county water supplies and would have banned commercial water hauling to destinations where the water would be used for non-permitted activities, such as illegal cannabis farms.
The regulations would have required additional resources from the county, including hiring a licensed hydrologist to help monitor residential water levels and use throughout the region.
Differing opinions about proposed regulations
Some public commenters were in support of regulating local groundwater.
“Part of what we are saying is we want to protect the water in Mendocino County,” Robby Wyre, a member of the ad hoc group and a Round Valley resident, said during the public comment section of the meeting.
Wyre noted that he has seen many people in his community lose their water due to neighboring illegal cannabis grows.
“We’ve got this problem of people growing in their backyard, none of which should be legal. If it’s an agricultural crop, it should be on agricultural land,” he said.
Adam Gaska, executive director of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau, was among those who opposed the ordinance and expressed his concern at the meeting.
“The magnitude of water sellers has decreased significantly because of the economic decrease in the cannabis industry,” said Gaska. “The county does not have the staff or the resources to have a regulatory process. We’d like to ask the county to ban these efforts to enforce a regulatory practice.”
The supervisors, perplexed by the differing opinions at the meeting, expressed support for the ordinance but opposed using more resources for a stricter permitting program within the Planning Services and Environmental Health departments.
“I am all for safer and legal water, but I don’t think the county needs to regulate it,” said Supervisor Ted Williams. “I don’t think that outlawing the water hauling activities would lessen how much water is being extracted.”
Haschak outlined how the board should address the proposed ordinance and regulations.
“All the proposal is looking at is to make sure that when a person wants to sell water to another place, is that it’s sustainable for the neighbors,” Haschak said.
Even though the other supervisors decided against pursuing further regulations, Haschak hopes to reform a separate water ordinance committee in the future and seek grants to fund an expanded permitting program.
Wyre, also a board member of the Round Valley Water District, will continue working to pass stricter water extraction regulations throughout the county, specifically in Round Valley, where he hopes to pass an ordinance similar to the one discussed at Tuesday’s meeting.
“This isn’t about meters on the well, this is about protecting our groundwater and making it so that people who want to privatize water can’t,” he said.
This story originally appeared in The Mendocino Voice.
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