Wake Up Mendocino

Editor: If you live in Mendocino, you must be concerned that the town’s wells are going dry, businesses are closing and residents and businesses are cutting back on water use. Many have been forced to buy water from tankers and several businesses are putting in portable toilets to reduce their water use. Our town’s water supply system, which relies on groundwater, about 90% of it obtained from individual wells, is no longer reliable. With more than 100 wells having gone dry, the Mendocino City Community Services District has done what it could to encourage us to conserve water, restrict water use and provide treated sewage for irrigation. Following the decision by Fort Bragg to stop supplying water to tankers, the State Water Resource Control Board, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, and the City of Ukiah have worked out a way to provide water to coastal towns including Mendocino by tanker and to provide funding for property owners without above-ground storage. While these emergency measures will help alleviate the ongoing water shortage, it is apparent that Mendocino’s water supplies are and will continue to be inadequate. The town has declined and will suffer further decline unless it wakes up and does what needs to be done.

If individual wells will no longer work as the predominant method of water supply for most of Mendocino, the town needs to design, fund, and build a central piped water supply system serving selected areas of the town.

Possible potable water sources could include wells, streams, and desalination. If potable water is either not available or too expensive, treated sewage could be used for irrigation, toilet flushing, and fire fighting. The town could possibly join together with other communities to build a larger system. The various options leading to the design of a central system for the town need to be thoroughly investigated.

Mendocino should update and extend its previous studies of possible ground and surface water sources and then undertake a feasibility study to map out a course of action. Such work might be expensive but the cost of doing nothing would be greater.

It is time to WAKE UP, MENDOCINO!

— Jeffry Stubbs, Mendocino