Proposed Butte County district stirring controversy
A proposal for a new Butte County water district is wending its way through the approval process, and not everyone is happy about that.
The Tuscan Water District would cover most of the northwestern county, excluding Chico. The area is dependent on well water. Under a recently approved state law, the amount of groundwater currently being pumped in the area will have to be reduced.
Each well owner is currently on their own. No entity speaks for them as a group. Proponents say the Tuscan Water District would be that advocate for the whole area.
However a handful of farming families own the majority of the land in the district, and opponents think they could stack the district’s board of directors to the detriment of the others.
The Tuscan District also seeks to bring surface water into the area, to reduce the amount being pumped from the ground.
But opponents question the need for a new district to do that, saying other agencies have the authority and wherewithal to provide any services a new water district could provide.
The district
The proposed Tuscan Water District would cover 102,327 acres of Butte County, from the Tehama County line south to below Durham, and from the Sacramento River east to Highway 99.
It would not include the area served by the California Water Service’s Chico Division, or the M&T Ranch along the Sacramento River, which has surface water rights.
There are more than 3,000 separate parcels in the proposed district. The 75 district applicants have less than 700 of those parcels, but those amount to 57,092 acres, or 56 percent of the land that would be in the district.
There are 1,795 “domestic pumpers,” on parcels of 10 acres or less, covering 9,895 acres.
Most of the proposed district is prime farmland, responsible for $290.5 million in production in 2017, according to the county’s annual crop report.
The proposed district is named for the Tuscan Aquifer, a massive underground reservoir beneath the Sacramento Valley, which is the source for the area’s water.
Why?
Groundwater was not regulated in California until the previous drought, which saw a frenzy of pumping, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley.
Well-heeled farm corporations drilled deeper and pumped more, drying the shallower wells of their poorer neighbors. Land levels dropped as the water was sucked out and soil settled into the voids that were left.
In response, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act was passed in 2014. It requires all the areas dependent on groundwater to prepare a plan to avoid “adverse impacts” to the water table.
The law applies to the Sacramento Valley floor in Butte County. That area has been divided into three “sub-basins.”
There’s the Wyandotte Creek Sub-Basin, covering Oroville and areas south along the east side of the Feather River.
The Butte Sub-Basin covers the southwest county, an area largely served by irrigation districts with surface water rights. They are less impacted by the new law covering groundwater.
But the northwestern county is almost entirely dependent on groundwater. It’s been defined as the Vina Sub-Basin, and initial studies indicate it will have to cut its current draw of 250,000 acre-feet by about 15,000 acre-feet to meet the requirements of the law.
A preliminary report lays out a number of actions to accomplish that reduction, including conservation. But importation of surface water is included in the mix.
Water imports
Organizers of the Tuscan District don’t think any of the current participants have the capacity or interest in importing water, and that’s one of the reasons the district is being sought.
“Conservation is a part of it,” said Tovey Giezentanner, a spokesman for the District, “but it doesn’t get us there.” If surface water isn’t brought in, farmland will have to be fallowed, which isn’t easy with orchards that are the predominant crop in the Vina Sub-Basin.
“This is a legacy drill,” said Giezentanner. “These are multi-generational farms. They want to bring water into the area so they can keep on farming.”
But district opponent Aimee Raymond said, “This organization is not needed. There’s not a job for them to do.”
She said the groundwater sustainability agency that will be created for the Vina Sub-Basin will have the authority to undertake any of the kinds of projects that the Tuscan District might take on.
“They’ve injected themselves to execute the projects, but they have no track record. You would never accept a bid from them.”
“There’s a thousand ways this could work,” responded Giezentanner. Forming the district is the “… most realistic way this is going to happen.”
“We don’t want to do nothing, and if no one else does, we have to fallow.”
“Somebody’s got to move these projects forward.”
Representation
Most special districts are “registered voter districts,” in which each person registered to vote gets to cast one ballot.
However many water districts are what’s called “landowner voter districts,” in which the votes are allocated by acreage. The Tuscan District is proposed to be this kind of district.
Since the district’s 75 applicants own 56 percent of the land, they would have a voting majority over the other 2,000 or so voters in the district.
This arrangement is legal under a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that if a district’s services are not general but rather benefit an area of land, the landowners have the say on what the district does.
District opponent Aimee Raymond, describes formation of the district as a “power grab” by the few dozen large landowners.
“They’re claiming the need to fill in the white areas but the county is by default responsible for the white areas.”
However the county has encouraged groundwater-dependent growers to form a district for years, showing no interest in a Butte County Water District that has been proposed to encompass the entire county.
Giezentanner responded to the allusion that no one was looking out for the little guy, by pointing out a number of the little guys were among the applicants.
He points out the six applicants with the most land account for about 29,000 acres. That means the remaining 69 applicants have about 28,000 acres, an average of about 406 acres.
He said the list of applicants includes a number of domestic pumpers on parcels smaller than 10 acres.
“If no one was looking out for the little guy, they wouldn’t be participating.”
Opposition
Tuscan District opponents will be having a town hall meeting from 7-9 p.m. today, Aug. 24, at the Chico Masonic Lodge, 1110 W. East. Ave. The meeting will be on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89760790648. The meeting ID is 897 6079 0648.
Raymond said opponents have formed a group — buttewaterwatch.org — to keep an eye on who’s making water management plans, what the plans are, and documenting the results.
History
The core of the applicants seeking to create the Tuscan Water District belong to a group known as the Agricultural Groundwater Users of Butte County, which was formed in 2016, in response to SGMA’s passage.
The group approached the Bute County Board of Supervisors to support creating the district, and on Oct. 10, 2017, the board unanimously endorsed the effort.
That endorsement has been seconded by Assemblyman James Gallagher, Rep. Doug LaMalfa, the Butte County Farm Bureau, the California Farm Bureau, the Northern California Water Association, the Family Water Alliance, the Paradise Irrigation District, the Durham Irrigation District, the Western Canal District, the Richvale Irrigation District, and the Rock Creek Reclamation District.
The proposal has also been endorsed by the Monroeville Irrigation District in Glenn County, which is a mirror image of what the Tuscan District seeks to achieve east of the Sacramento River.
The Monroeville District — named for a vanished community south of Hamilton City — includes a patchwork of properties pinched along the Sacramento River, between the Glenn-Colusa, Provident, and Princeton-CodoraGlenn water districts.
Next
Approval of the Tuscan Water District lies in the realm of the Butte County Local Agency Formation Commission. LAFCO has received the application and it has been dubbed “complete,” according to LAFCo Executive Director Steve Lucas.
The application can be viewed at https://www.buttelafco.org/announcements.
LAFCo staff is evaluating the application, awaiting comments from the County Water Commission and the Board of Supervisors.
The county Water Commission first heard the proposal Aug. 9, and will discuss it further at its Sept. 1 meeting. A date for the Board of Supervisors’ hearing has not yet been set.