S.J. County hosts Lodi workshop on water project

Lodi farmers and other community members gathered in Jackson Hall at the Lodi Grape Festival Grounds on Thursday evening to learn more about North San Joaquin Water Conservation District’s latest project.

Along with the San Joaquin County Public Works Department and the League of Women Voters, NSJWCD hosted the workshop to inform the public about their South System Groundwater Improvement Project. Jane Wagner-Tyack, a League of Women Voters board member, welcomed the guests to the event, saying that while she could not express support for the project itself, the league does support the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which gave NSJWCD the power to propose the project.

“I feel really strongly that when people in an area take responsibility for their use of resources, they can find ways to manage those resources sustainably without outside regulations,” Wagner-Tyack said.

The project involves installing seven miles of pipeline from the Mokelumne River to Pixley Creek Slough and Bear Creek, according to Tom Flinn, vice president and treasurer of NSJWCD.

PVC piping will be placed directly inside the 60-year-old existing cement pipeline, Flinn explained, moving pressurized water from a newer, more efficient pump station at the river to approximately 6,000 acres along the main pipeline. This would enable growers to irrigate their land with surface water instead of groundwater, which Flinn said has been depleted for years.

“People along the pipeline will be able to receive water from the existing pipeline, and others will be able to get their water from Bear Creek or Pixley Slough. If these people we pump water to stop using groundwater, then groundwater levels will go up. People not getting surface water will also benefit, because there will be more groundwater available for them to use,” Flinn said.

One of the factors that motivated the proposal is NSJWCD’s water rights, according to Flinn. The district has the right to up to 20,000 acre-feet of water per year, and must show substantial progress toward using that water to the State of California by 2025, Flinn said. By 2040, he added, the district must show that they are using the maximum amount of that water or risk losing their rights.

“If we fail to use this water, we lose that water. The state has made that very clear, we’ve even had to file for extensions in the past. We can’t save that water if we can’t have that water,” Flinn said.

To raise the $13 million still needed to complete the $18.75 million project, the NSJWCD voted on Jan. 8 to create a special subsection of the water district in which irrigated land parcels will be assessed based on size and proximity to the pipeline, according to Jennifer Spaletta, NSJWCD’s general counsel.

Parcels smaller than five acres will be excluded, Spaletta said, as will unirrigated parcels within the district. Assessments for tier-one parcels along the pipeline ranged from $98.75 to $123.44 per acre, while assessments for tier-two parcels off the pipeline ranged from $40 to $50. This drew concerns from tier-two parcel owners such as Mariah Kendall, who owns a 13-acre parcel on Harney Lane.

“It seems like a lot of people who are paying, and not a lot of people who are getting any benefits at all,” Kendall said.

Mark Goble, Kendall’s boyfriend, also opposed the project, saying that he felt the cost is too high and the district is trying to rush the project without exploring alternatives, such as purchasing a reservoir.

“It’s insanely expensive. $18 million could be spent in so many different ways. I am very much against it, and the fact of the matter is that they’re sneaking this through. They’re going as fast as humanly possible, starting in the middle of the holiday season, with as little publicity as possible,” Goble said.

NSJWCD began public outreach with meetings on Nov. 27, 2017, in which they received public input that was taken into consideration before they approved the engineer’s report on Jan. 8, 2018, according to Flinn. The proposal is now out for voter approval, he said, adding that ballots are due by Feb. 26 and will be counted at the end of the month.