The downside of privatizing our aquifer

Our aquifer is too important to turn it over to the private entity known as the Tuscan Water District, or TWD. There, decisions will be made with little public input and mainly for the benefit of the farmers. It’s voting structure — for every acre owned, you receive one vote — guarantees the larger farms (some corporate owned) will always have their way with our groundwater which is our public resource. They claim no groundwater will be shipped out of Butte County, but there are ways around that. For instance, an entity like TWD can put surface water (think Paradise water up the hill) into the aquifer and it is not officially groundwater; it becomes “surface water in storage” and the entity that put that water in there “owns” that water and can do with it whatever they wish including selling it. Over time, our aquifer could become privatized and controlled by the TWD. Also, agricultural wells can pump down the level of the aquifer to no detriment of their own, but to domestic well owners and to our trees in our urban forest and Bidwell Park it could be disastrous. In this drought, or could be a megadrought, we can not afford to gamble with our precious aquifer. After all, we are the “City of Trees.”

— Susan Schrader, Chico