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Two days following the most comprehensive public lecture and tour of restoration efforts on Big River, the Mendocino City Community Services District held a board meeting on October 30 where they discussed potential sources of water to supply an anticipated community water system. At the time, their superintendent announced that GHD Engineering, the international firm hired by MCCSD in 2021 to assist with its water and wastewater challenges, had looked “at water sources up Big River and some of the potential gulches” (tributaries), reassuring him that, “They are very optimistic. They think there’a a way to make it work.” (minute 1:19:15) He did not identify any alternative potable water sources the firm would be investigating.
This news, and its timing, could not be more unfortunate – or pernicious. For one, not a single member of the MCCSD board, staff, or their engineers attended the highly publicized Big River outreach event to learn about the costly, ambitious restoration projects completed and planned for the basin. Even more troublesome, some months prior at a public meeting, the district’s president, Dennak Murphy, read a prepared statement announcing the district would not be targeting Big River for water. No information was provided on whether the statement was initiated by board action; there is nothing to be found in past agendas or minutes which records it.
This river system, currently in recovery from an unfortunate legacy of early, intensive logging practices begun in the 1860’s, is now, according to CDFW, “on the mend”. A 2006 assessment by leading state agencies concluded that future water diversions not only have the potential to significantly reduce surface water flows of the river and its tributaries, but the potential for land development and increase in demand for water from the river’s basin remains an issue of concern. Given their analyses, they contend the river has the potential to become a basin of high-quality fishery refugia: encouraging news, particularly for commercial and recreational fishing interests. Even more hopeful is 2022-23 data from NOAA showing a significant rise in returning CCC Coho salmon in Big River populations, unlike other North Coast streams; steelhead numbers are also trending positively, although not considered significant.
While specifics were not provided during the meeting, GHD may be looking to punch wells and extract groundwater located at or near tributaries (or their headwaters) that it suspects may contain water to supply adequate source capacity for a public water system. This is certainly the case for an emergency water supply and storage project whose Subsequent Mitigated Negative Declaration was approved last June by the Mendocino Unified School District at a northeast corner of its property, where up to ten wells will be drilled in upcoming months at the headwaters of Slaughterhouse Gulch, a non-fish bearing stream that flows due west to the sea. Complicating matters, there is a concept circulating to expand the MCCSD’s jurisdictional boundaries to include areas beyond its single-square mile, meaning: far more water may be needed.
While district staff described the state as being generally supportive of their intentions, they reported it had not yet “signed off” on them and a $400,000 feasibility study. In the past, Supervisor Ryan Rhoades has offered that LAFCO would love to see the district expand. He has also reported that the special district will be utilizing the services of the West Company which, oddly enough, assists with small business development. To date, district ratepayers have not been asked their position on either expansion or a public water system through benefit of a public hearing. They continue to ask questions, request details on district discussions, conversations, and intentions, meeting with the groundwater management standing committee (which has only met a single time this year nearly ten months ago), and the teleconferencing and posting of its public meetings. In the meantime, more and more ad hoc committees are being proposed and created by the current board which, by their very nature, effectively eliminates public participation.
Whatever the outcome, it bears repeating: the surface water in the Big River system, whether the mainstem, the basin, its sub-basins, sub-watersheds, headwaters, streams, creeks, seeps, springs, alluvial channels, and perennial, intermittent, or ephemeral tributaries (“gulches”) is connected to underlying groundwater aquifers, and visa versa. Attention will need to be paid to the impacts future water diversions or groundwater extraction would cause to public trust resources, not only to protected fish and wildlife species, but navigable waters, groundwater dependent ecosystems, and plant communities as well, including diminishing pygmy and redwood forests of the greater Big River Hydrologic Region.
There are better, nature-based alternatives worth pursuing. Direct Potable Reuse is one and with the state poised to approve new, long-awaited regulations later this week to support it, coastal communities will benefit in particular from the new policies since they typically discharge wastewater into oceans and not rivers. While this avoids taking water away from fragile ecosystems or downstream users, even more critically, it takes pressure off sensitive and politically-contentious river systems like Big River.
Balancing societal needs with those of the environment will be paramount in developing water resiliency. The overarching goal should be improving water supplies while protecting Big River. To this end, I encourage concerned residents, organizations, and reporters not to wait for the CEQA scoping process, but to become informed and involved now by submitting a request to be placed on the MCCSD notification list for public meeting notifications and any future developments affecting Big River watershed at: mccsd@mcn.org
Note: The MCCSD continues to stubbornly refuse to teleconference, post, and archive its public meetings. I urge you to also requesting the district begin to do so.
Christina Aranguren
President, The Institute for Conservation, Advocacy, Research, and Education
