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This letter is written in response to this initial letter to the editor.
The appeal is submitted to the California Coastal Commission to prevent the Mendocino Unified School District from expanding its present water system five-fold, extracting 600,000 gallons of groundwater from County designated “Critical Groundwater Area” and within the State designated “Critically Overdrafted Basin” without adequate groundwater testing.
The best way to explain why ten protestants have appealed the school district’s project is to invoke the “tragedy of the commons.” The proposed 9-well well-field and two four-story tall holding tanks threaten to reenact what has happened so often in the past to free and open exploitation of common, communally held resources. In England, three or four hundred years ago when every village had a common grazing ground, the most powerful people – those with more cattle – over-grazed the commons and permanently ruined them for everyone else. The appeal is an attempt to prevent that from happening in Mendocino.
All well owners in this aquifer, all water users in this community, share in the very scarce groundwater. Because we want that natural resource preserved, not ruined, everyone’s right of use must be tempered by reasonable sharing. For over a century, California common law has repeatedly established in court cases a reasonable way to protect groundwater. If you own land, you can use as much groundwater as you need to enjoy the fruits of that land, but unless there is extra water underground, you cannot use the extracted water off your property for other purposes. Water stays with the property in times of scarcity.
Think of what that means in Mendocino, where wells go dry regularly. Do we have extra, surplus water in the ground? We think it is the county’s duty to require the school district to show that there is extra water, but neither the county and nor the school district has done that in spite of the seven years spent on planning, project revisions, and permitting.
Following common law, both the state and the county have passed regulations and codes to protect our groundwater, especially on the coast, to guard against a tragedy of the commons. Normally, CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act), the Coastal Act, the Coastal Element of the county Plan, county development codes, and even Mendocino City Community Service District ordinances require any development which depends on groundwater to establish a test well and use the test well to demonstrate the sufficiency of water (that the planned project will not debase the area’s groundwater levels) and to produce a hydrological study showing the impacts of the project on the aquifer. Only after this “proof of water” process can the project be considered as a whole for permitting.
However, the County has, for a second time, approved the school district’s project without prior demonstration of surplus water in the ground. In addition, it has approved a well as a production well without any proof of water. The County has given up the whole idea of proof of water and with it protecting our common right to water.
As a result, the project threatens all neighborhood wells because the 9 wells are located on about 6 acres of land in the middle of a residential area where groundwater is so critical that lot sizes allow one residential well every 5 acres. It threatens all wells downstream, west of the K-8 school, because the well-field may intercept groundwater flowing to the wells in the village west of Highway 1. It threatens the designated environmentally sensitive habitat area wetlands which form the headwaters of Slaughterhouse Gulch and Creek since the wells are all inside the normal 100 feet buffer that supposedly protects the wetlands. And, because it impacts the Slaughterhouse watershed, it threatens the water source for Hills Ranch.
The project simply makes no sense. The school district says that it will draw water from the aquifer during drought to give to well owners whose wells have gone dry because that same aquifer has gone dry. We would like to see some evidence, even a reasonable argument, that this is not magical thinking.
Along with lack of adequate testing, the appeal states other serious concerns. The school district has not demonstrated a need for the number of wells or the size of the storage facilities; it violates the mandatory height limits for structures in a designated highly scenic area next to a historic hiking trail; it has not established criteria and costs for distributing drought relief water (to those from whom it has taken the water?); it has repeatedly violated public participation and notification laws; it relies on demonstrably false declarations and claims; it refuses to acknowledge cumulative impacts from its many related projects. As in many classic cases of water grabs, the project avoided the required process of public, open scrutiny provided in the California Brown Act.
Hence, the appellants asked the Coastal Commission to consider the substance of the Appeal and either to send the matter back to the County with a mandate to comply with the state Constitution as well as with local and state laws or to hear and to judge itself the school district’s application.
In its closing statement, the appellants wrote:
Groundwater availability is crucial if not paramount to the balance which the Coastal Act tries to maintain between preservation and development. Lack of water has stymied development and population growth, but it has also protected the area’s open spaces and large parcels as well as the forests and streams that characterize the area’s landscape. More groundwater dependent development will result in a harmful imbalance. Thus, serious and competent scrutiny of all water projects is necessary for preserving the life we know and enjoy. This is especially true today under the threat of global warming, uncertain and altered climatic conditions, and the pressure of migration to the Coast. Ill conceived water projects are, possibly, the single greatest threat to the Coastal balance. The violation of the requirement for proof of water may seem like a small matter, but its consequences can substantially impact both humans (the overlying water rights holders of the whole Mendocino community) and the natural environment (the wetlands and the scenic beauties)–as well as ultimately injuring the tourist industry upon which so much of our local economy depends. Decisions about water projects affect not just local lives but the public at large. We appeal to the Coastal Commission to ensure that the public will of Californians, expressed in the referendum that created the Coastal Act, is not thwarted by misconstruction of the law, misinformation, or nonfeasance and inadequate discussion.
For a full list of allegations, please read the appeal itself. You can request a copy of the appeal (Appeal of UM_2024-0008) from the staff of the North Coast office of the California Coastal Commission: NorthCoast@coastal.ca.gov.
Claudia Boudreau. Mary Falkenrath, Marc Laventurier, Rich Jung, Maggie O’Rourke, Norman de Vall, Monica Steinisch, Todd Walton, Max Yeh, Appellants.
Australia, Africa, India, and China have accomplished incredible things in regards to increasing groundwater. It’s pretty funny that the school, the reason we seem to have no clue how nature works, is using a failed reductionist/extractionist method to address the issue. On the subject of groundwater managment we are past the invention phase, we are past the early adopters phase. We have ample data, plenty of water, comprehension not so much.
I live in Redwood Valley, so not directly involved. That said; It is easy to understand concerns and fears of the community of folks who depend on shallow wells that could be affected. On the other side of equations: It would be great to have those big water tanks full of water, and available for emergency needs. From my view, I would think those tanks could be filled in the rainy season without affecting shallow wells in the dry or drought system. I wonder what the best way to get into the win win arena might be. What kind of potential agreements could be put on the brainstorming table to achieve a win win?