This is about more than water

On Thursday, Sept. 24, the Butte County Board of Supervisors will vote on whether to endorse the formation of the Tuscan Water District.

Conservative politicians, despite happy sounds about family life and tradition, are set to saddle us all with yet another governing body that will shower hapless well-dependent homeowners with enough acronyms, legalese, and slick PR to make most of us give up and just hope the powers-that-be are acting in good faith.

The problem with these water districts elsewhere in the state is that they tend to take on lives of their own once formed. They influence politicians with campaign cash, and they sue the state when it tries to reduce allocations to cope with drought and protect endangered species.

Because they are one-acre, one-vote, the biggest landowners control them regardless of whatever symbolic concessions they make to the homeowners and small farmers within their boundaries.

Big corporate agriculture increasingly dominates this region and long-established family operators are shrinking and disappearing. The Tuscan Water District will only heighten the incentives for big fish to swallow small fish, in order to gain more control over the water and the money it brings. And if the water is depleted and the land loses value, corporations can write down their losses for tax credit and move on, without shedding a tear. The rest of us who actually live here won’t have those luxuries.

Concentrated power is undesirable, whether governmental or private. I believe this is a conservative point of view.

— Jeffrey Obser, Chico