Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
September 11, 2007
5. Agencies, Programs, People
PLANNING FOR DEVELOPMENT:
St. Helena may see water on the ballot - Napa Valley Register
RATE ISSUES:
Complaint filed over water; Provider claims Redlands rate increase violates 1923 deal - Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
PROFILE:
Former mayor maintains role as 'zanjero' of mutual water firm - Riverside Press
AWARD WINNING TEAM:
Pacific team honored for Delta, river improvement - Stockton Record
C.A.S.T. EVENT AT
Disadvantaged youth catch a fishing thrill - Paradise Post
PLANNING FOR DEVELOPMENT:
By Jesse Duarte, staff writer
Britton plans to gather about 400 signatures to place an initiative on the ballot that, if passed, would require
Britton said he believes the policy would prevent
"We've got significant water shortages and marginal sewer capabilities," he said. "Until we get those fixed and upgraded, we shouldn't be putting additional taxes on the system."
Under the new policy, every April 1 the city would calculate its water supply based on the safe yield of
The city would also calculate its average annual water usage over the previous three calendar years. If the amount of available water exceeds the average usage by 120 percent, the city could use the excess for planning purposes to allow new hook-ups and water uses.
If it doesn't exceed that threshold, projects creating new water demands would have to wait until the water supply could handle it.
Affordable housing units would be exempt from the policy -- as long as they don't cause the water supply to dip below 100 percent of annual demand.
No groundwater
Groundwater would be notably absent from both calculations. Britton said reports of wells drying up prove that the local water table isn't being replenished at the rate it's being drawn down.
Depleting the groundwater could end up hurting the wine industry that
Earlier this year, a report calculated that groundwater has supplied 18 percent of the city's water over the last 10 years.
The same report concluded that the city -- the thirstiest city per capita in the valley -- would have to undertake major conservation efforts to bring usage down enough to meet the 120-percent mark.
Britton said the initiative could motivate water customers to conserve -- if they reduce their water use, the annual need will start to decline.
Groundwater isn't the city's only unreliable water source, he said. The city also shouldn't take for granted its deal with the city of
That agreement is contingent upon St. Helena's rights to
Britton said he decided to circulate the initiative for inclusion on the ballot as a private citizen because introducing it at the city council level would require an environmental impact report.
"This way, once the people vote on it, the only way it can be changed is by going back to the voters again with another initiative," he said.
Britton said he's received positive feedback on the idea so far, but wants to let voters have the final say.
Britton submitted the proposed text of the initiative to the city attorney Tuesday. He said he and a few volunteers are ready to start collecting signatures as soon as the initiative has been titled and summarized. #
http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2007/09/11/news/local/iq_4106640.txt
RATE ISSUES:
Complaint filed over water; Provider claims
By Jason Pesick, staff writer
MENTONE - A small mutual water company serving a few dozen Mentone customers has filed a claim against
The new rate shot up from 2 cents per 100 cubic feet to 40 cents per 100 cubic feet Jan. 1.
"It's called breach of contract, isn't it? It's that simple," said Duane Tubbs, the manager of the company, Rocky Comfort Mutual Water Co.
Tubbs said the increase is a violation of the 1923 contract limiting how much
"All we're asking them to do is pay their fair share," said Chris Diggs, the city's water resources manager.
The new treatment facility cost $20 million to $30 million, he said, some of which Rocky Comfort should have to help pay for.
The 40 cents is also less than the general rate of $1.05 per 100 cubic feet
Tubbs, a 61-year-old retired
The claim, which does not ask for a specific amount in damages, said
The claim also says the way the city calculated the increase, using measures of inflation, violates the contract. It goes on to say
Tubbs owns 7.2 acres of land, which he uses to grow oranges as a hobby. He said that even in the hottest two-month period of the year, he wouldn't even have to pay $100 for water.
"We`re wanting them to reinstate the original agreement instead of breaching it," he said. #
PROFILE:
Former mayor maintains role as 'zanjero' of mutual water firm
Riverside Press
By Naomi Kresge, staff writer
Most mornings Bill Cunningham drives an old van along the waterlines that run through the hills of south
Stopping at boxed openings in the lines that he finds tucked under hedges, along roadsides or sometimes in people's backyards, Cunningham lifts the lid and shoves a board into the stream of water to divert it.
The water rises in the box, then flows into a different line toward customers who are scheduled to get irrigation water that day.
The 80-year-old former city councilman and leader of the city's slow-growth movement is keeping alive a 120-year-old tradition of irrigation that threatens to slip away along with the citrus agriculture it once supported.
Cunningham, an officer of West Redlands Water Co., is one of the few remaining
"I'm by default the president, the manager and the zanjero, or ditch digger," said Cunningham.
With his oldest son, Andy Cunningham, he owns 69 of the water company's 805 shares.
While the patchwork of mutual water companies that control water rights throughout the valley remains, most of the water now flows through modern systems built by the city of
West Redlands Water Co., which delivers irrigation water to 35 shareholders, is one of the few to deliver water the same way it did when it was founded in the late 19th century, when the first mutual water companies made it possible to grow oranges in the dusty Redlands hills.
Cunningham knows which days the company's shareholders irrigate their oranges, grapefruit and avocados. And he meets most of the other shareholders on his monthly rounds, a human face in a business dominated by large utilities.
Last 'Zanjero'
The water already is flowing when Cunningham starts his rounds at 7:30 a.m. at the beginning of West Redlands' ceramic pipe system in a corner of
Chinese laborers dug two miles of trench to install the main line in two-foot sections, he said, under a contract worth $10,000 at the time.
Mutual water companies were the brainchild in the late 1880s of Luther M. Holt, a Riverside pioneer who also advised Brown and his business partner, Frank M. Judson.
Holt believed farmers should set up nonprofit private stock companies to hold water rights and amortize the expense of laying pipes and other infrastructure, said Larry Burgess, director of Redlands' A.K. Smiley Public Library.
Burgess, a board member of Redlands Mutual Water Co., is the company's representative on the Bear Valley Mutual Water Co. board.
Shareholders get water at a set rate and pay an assessment for water-system repairs or construction according to the number of shares they own.
Because the companies are nonprofit, they have an interest in keeping rates as low as possible for shareholders, Burgess said. The point of the system was to give farmers access to cheap water.
Burgess could think of about eight mutual water companies still active in the
Water Rights Valuable
It's unlikely the companies will disappear anytime soon, he said. The water rights they own are simply too valuable.
More likely, as other utilities own a larger portion of the old mutuals, more of the distribution will be moved off the old water lines. In
The city's policy since the 1950s has been to require the transfer of water shares to the city's water utility when groves are replaced with homes, he said.
Today the city owns 60 percent of West Redlands and much of
Other than West Redlands, only Bear Valley, Crafton Water Co. and Lugonia Water Co. still employ zanjeros, said Mike Huffstutler,
"Bill is still unique," Burgess said. "What he's doing is at one time the way business was done everywhere in
Hiding in Plain Sight
As Cunningham drove down Crescent Avenue from
Inside one hedge was a manhole, he said. Another box was in plain sight -- but invisible if you don't know what a weir box looks like -- at a manicured curb. A third is in a resident's backyard.
Easements give him access rights so he can make the necessary adjustments.
The concrete boxes with their hinged lids allow Cunningham to raise and lower weirs -- notched boards that slide into a groove in the pipe -- and adjust the level and direction of the water flow.
"We go into their yard four times a month to put in or take out a gate for the water," Cunningham said at one home.
Next to one large Tudor-style house, Cunningham pulled open the flat metal trapdoors covering a system of weirs that split the water flow in several directions -- to his house near
A fourth line once fed another grove on land where seven houses now sit.
Cunningham demonstrated the weir boards he uses to block part of the water flow in the main line, raising the water level so it can run into other pipes and flow toward shareholders' properties. On the 30-day schedule, three to four people typically take water each day. Gravity propels the system.
"It's all done as it was done in 1887," Cunningham said.
Cunningham, who moved to
"I had one concern -- the property had no water shares," Cunningham said. "So I bought one water share."
Cunningham accumulated more shares over time, planting his land with citrus and avocados. Eventually he found himself running the company, at about the time he retired from teaching physics and astronomy in 1987.
"I'm not an old-time farmer. I'm a busted-down academic who wanted to make a go of it," Cunningham said.
Keeping Groves Alive
Driving through south
Among the West Redlands customers who live in the midst of an orange grove is Bernie Young, 62, a retired
When Cunningham drove up his driveway to say hello, Young was outside supervising his twice-monthly irrigation.
Young runs water down open furrows, an old-fashioned method that loses some water to evaporation.
Small metal slides -- flume gates -- control how much water flows down each row.
"You let it run for about a half-hour and see how far the water has gotten down, and depending on how dry it is, you either cut it down or open it up," Young said.
The water would flow for 24 hours, until Cunningham cut it off the next day at 8:30 a.m.
Young sells his citrus at a farmer's stand, making just enough to pay for water, grove maintenance and fertilizer. Irrigating his grove from a city tap would cost far more.
Cunningham said he usually doesn't break even selling produce from his groves.
For them and others like them, agriculture in
Cunningham said he hopes his oldest son, who makes the morning rounds with him now, will keep the family's groves and the zanjero's position alive after his father dies.
"It's been good for 100 years," Cunningham said. "If people are willing to do it, and there are shareholders willing to stay, I would suppose we'd stay with it."
The activist farmer
Bill Cunningham is not a farmer by birth or trade. Born in
1987: Cunningham is elected to the Redlands City Council.
1998: Begins two-year term as mayor.
Political battles: Led the city in a fight against developers and the county over the future of the Donut Hole, an unincorporated island of land in north
Campaigned: For growth control, championing successful ballot measures in 1987 and 1997 that resulted in rules the city still must follow: a 400-house annual cap on building permits and a study of the economic impact of every project approved in the city.
Retired: From teaching in 1987
Acquired: 69 shares of the water company, which he now operates by hand as one of the
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_B_cunningham11.536643.html
AWARD WINNING TEAM:
Pacific team honored for Delta, river improvement
The institute has sponsored conferences and forums addressing the health of Delta levees, restoration of the
These meetings led to a series of recommendations to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators.
The university also is working to restore the
The award was presented by the Floodplain Management Association. #
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070911/A_NEWS/709110314
C.A.S.T. EVENT AT
Disadvantaged youth catch a fishing thrill
By Jennifer Barker, staff writer
Saturday, Sept. 8, community members from organizations throughout
The organization, Catch A Special Thrill for Kids (C.A.S.T), hosted the third annual fishing event. At 7 a.m., 46 kids, ages 7 to 17 gathered with volunteers from many county organizations at
"We were the grunts," Cal Fire Chief Scott Mclean said, but he was glad to help.
The kids were each given a volunteer buddy to help assist them throughout their two-hour fishing trip. The children fished for bass and coho salmon and each child had the opportunity to catch at least one fish.
"I caught six fishes, big fish and little fish and a wooden stick, we called a tree pounder," one child, Tyler Twist, said after coming back from fishing. "And I got to drive the boat."
After fishing, Exclusive Limousine provided limousine service to the kids from the dock to the barbecue, Karl Winkler of C.A.S.T said. The kids were so excited to get a ride in a limo, Winkler said. At the barbecue an awards ceremony was held for the children. The children were given a plaque that had a picture of them with their boat captain, a goody bag and a Build-a-Bear with a C.A.S.T vest, donated by Noah's Arc.
The mayor of Oroville, Steve Jernigan, announced the awards. Mayor Jernigan said he felt honored and humbled to be part of such an event.
"The smiles on the children's faces make it all worth while," Jernigan said. Getting teamwork together to bring unity to
Mayor Jernigan was not the only volunteer who felt teamwork helped make for such a great event. Without the over 200 volunteers present and the contributions from many businesses throughout the county it would not have been possible to hold this event and give these children the opportunity to go fishing, Karl Winkler said.
"It's a great community event," he said. "A lot of hard work and contribution goes into it."
Volunteer Donna Merrill from the Department of Fish and Game assisted kids on the handicapped accessible houseboat donated by the Lake Oroville Marina.
"The event is awesome for these kids," Merrill said.
Professional fishermen, Ron Diacon volunteered his time and donated water for the event, "anything we can do to give back," he said.
"It's great to get the kids away from the TV and video games, out of the air conditioning and into the outdoors," Diacon said.
Diacon also added how rare it is so see this many organizations come together for such a great cause. Cooperation with all the different agencies made this event possible, he said. That feeling seemed to be shared among many of the volunteers and community members throughout the event.
Each volunteer was given a T-shirt donated by Gold Country Casino. The back of the T-shirt lists the 29 organizations that made a contribution to the fishing event.
"It seemed like the whole
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