Photo credit: L.A. Times
It’s 2024 and groundwater continues to be a hot topic in Tehama County. The new supervisor district reps to the Groundwater Commission were chosen Tuesday. 4 out of 5 were the correct choices in this gal’s opinion. There is no district residency requirement, only county, so I applied for all 5 seats. In my application, I included a request for each supe to choose any applicant more qualified for their district. Someone more qualified applied for every position, but only 4 of those were appointed.
Flood Control Water Conservation Board agenda – 5 items for the 5 seatsThis do-over for the supe reps was brought about by the adoption of the new Bylaws and a desire for the entire governing board – the Food Control and Water Conservation District – to personally choose their own reps. It’s only 5 seats out of the 11 that make up the commission – not even a majority. Every other agency chooses its own rep through its own process and that person serves at the pleasure of that agency. Cool. However, up until now, only applicants nominated by the commission were presented to the board to serve as their reps. So, the governing body, (the FCWCD – who are also the board of supervisors,) were not allowed to choose their own reps. Additionally, if a supe wanted to change their rep, it took a ? vote. Now it only takes a simple majority.
Most of the FCWCD want to hear from all perspectives on the extremely important – maybe existential – issue of groundwater. Not former Chairman Bill Moule, apparently. He even kept forgetting he was the former chair. It had only been a half hour or so since he reluctantly handed his crown and scepter over to the new Chairman of the Board, District 5’s John Leach, so it’s understandable. Everyone got a chuckle.
In fact, let’s go off on a slight tangent here before we get into the GC appointments. It was the first board of supervisors meeting of 2024, so the Chair for the upcoming year was selected. It has been customary for the Board Chair to be an annual rotation in descending order of district number. Moule represents D1, so D5’s Leach was next in line for the throne.
Former Chair Bill Moule
2024 Chairman of the Board John Leach
There have been a couple of times in recent history when someone has stepped into that role out of turn. When D2’s Candy Carlson was deemed too new and female to serve as Chair and again when D5’s Burt Bundy was having trouble speaking. ‘Nuff said about those two anomalies, because they are another column entirely and water under the bridge. But we don’t forget.
So now Chairman Leach is facilitating the meetings and that’s fine. However, he is often difficult to hear. He repeatedly has to be reminded to speak into his microphone and often has his hands in front of his mouth while speaking. Would it be possible to get him a headset or lavalier so he can be heard? It’s frustrating. Especially for us rock ‘n’ roll Boomers whose hearing ain’t what it used to be.
But on to the GC appointments. Former D3 commissioner Bart Fleharty was appointed to the D1 seat and that was the correct choice. Sure, he has made boatloads of money as the agent connecting bazillionaires from the south to local landowners anxious to sell before the water runs out, but he has knowledge of water law and is fluent in legalese, so he can help prepare the responses to the Incomplete statuses of our Groundwater Sustainability Plans, which are due April 23.
D1 Commissioner and carpetbagger enabler Bart Fleharty
Andrew Grady was appointed to the D2 seat by Supervisor Candy Carlson and that was the correct choice, too. Andrew is very knowledgeable about the effects of the current overdraft and drought on valley oaks and local ecosystems. There was definitely a need for that voice on the commission.
District 3’s Pati Nolen appointed retired DWR hydrogeologist and farmer Seth Lawrence. Two perspectives – perfect.
D4 Supe Matt Hansen chose another retired DWR hydrogeologist named Michael Ward to rep his district. Nut mogul Hal Crain had reapplied for that seat, but he remains on the commission because the City of Tehama appointed him as their rep that very night. The Brown Act requires an agenda to be posted 72 hours before a meeting, and Crain’s appointment was already on the Tehama City Council agenda when Ward was appointed. No backroom dealings there, eh?
new D4 Commissioner Michael Ward
Shockingly, D1’s Bill Moule voted No on Ward’s appointment – the only No of the 25 votes cast for all 5 commission seats. He voted against an actual water expert when it had already been decided that Crain would remain on the commission anyway. Was Moule left out of the loop? Or is he just arrogant? Maybe both.
For the record, I have nothing against Crain – or any local farmer – serving on the GC. We need as many different stakeholder voices as possible. But there has never been a hydrogeologist on the GC and now we have 2. I call that a Win.
Rancher David Lester is the only applicant to retain his former seat, that being John Leach’s D5. Leach had the opportunity to appoint another actual water expert named Tim Mesa, but he has stated many times how happy he is with his rep. Happy with 4 Incomplete GSPs and one more on the way? Oooooookay. Leach is facing two challengers in the March primary, and either one would be an improvement.
Since the formation of the Tehama Groundwater Sustainability Agency, the goal has been to maintain local control of our groundwater – we don’t want the state stepping in. But the grower-heavy GC was formed and did the exact opposite of what was needed to keep the state out. If the responses to the DWR are not approved, the state will be stepping in and they will have no one to blame but themselves.
Three days after the appointments, the 2023 Tehama County Grand Jury Report was made public and it tears the Tehama County Groundwater Sustainability Agency a new one. You can but here’s a summary.
2023 Grand Jury Report – only one typo so far! (It’s should be Its)
For the most part, the GJ did a good job – it would have taken a three to five year investigation to uncover everything and they only had a year. They started out with the issue that most concerned the public – the 29 cents per acre well registry fee/tax that was attached to our property taxes. The Grand Jury saw the unfair way the fee was assessed and is recommending it be paid back.
They also brought up a point I had not previously considered – Any assessed fee should only be charged to property owners extracting water from one of the sub basins deemed medium to high priority – which are also the ones that were required to submit Groundwater Sustainability Plans. However, the County does not have records of every well and admits the registry would not provide that. So the County decided to just go ahead and charge everybody with over 2 acres in the entire county. Even those with no wells on their property.
Map of the sub basin areas – no one in the gray areas should have been a assessed a fee.
For our place in Manton, that’s less than $4.00. But for Sierra Pacific, it’s around $30,000 and they don’t use any groundwater. Oopsie. Cattle ranchers were also charged for large swaths of rangeland that use no groundwater.
Clearly, the fee was not assessed fairly, and the GJ contends that the GSA doesn’t have the power to charge it anyway. They also took issue with the threatening tone of the Well Registry Survey Form, which most people never even filled out.
The Grand Jury is also not happy with Luhdorff & Scalmanini Consulting Engineers, who were paid $2.4 million to produce the Groundwater Sustainability Plans that were determined to be Incomplete by the DWR. They were recently awarded another $15 million to respond to the DWR determinations and produce quarterly and yearly reports going forward. Oh, and to use whatever’s left over to implement “plans” for recharge and/or mitigation.
The GJ has recommended LCSE respond to the DWR for no extra payment, as their assignment was to submit plans that were actually good enough to be Approved. Agree 100%. The GJ didn’t point out that LCSE was directed by the GC to submit less than acceptable GSPs, because the GC didn’t want to monitor groundwater levels or take any action to mitigate the dry wells that members of the commission and their water guzzling orchards were causing.
The Tehama Crop Report shows the proliferation of fruit and nut crops
The entire charade was a “kick the can down the road” scheme to get a few more years of free flowing groundwater. Either that or LCSE is terrible at their job and shouldn’t have been awarded the $15 million going forward. LCSE has received all the contracts for SGMA implementation and the Grand Jury is not down with that at all.
Next no-no in the report is the “loan” of $634,000 from the County Roads Department to the GSA during the development of its funding mechanism. This should elicit some anger out of the folks who have to drive on our crappy county roadways. It appears there were several smaller transactions that added up to the $634k. One big transfer of that kind of money would have attracted a lot of attention, and I expect it will now.
At the time each transfer was approved (by a ? vote), it was explained that the Roads Department would be paid back through grant funding, but most grants are not allowed to be used for costs that were incurred prior to the grant. And they won’t be able to pay it back with the well registry fees, because that money may be returned to the taxpayers. What will they do – bake sale maybe?
Many findings and recommendations were included in the GJ Report, but none of them are legally binding, except that they must be responded to. So the FCWCD board may just vote to disagree. This oughta be good. I will keep you posted.
The one glaring omission in all of this is the lack of any blame being laid at the feet of County Counsel, who approved everything. I have written at length about our County Counsel, which is the law firm of Prentice Long. The Trinity County Grand Jury wrote a on the firm, which also serves as their County Counsel.
While focusing on Tehama for a minute, County Counsel sent the Auditor an email assuring him (at the time – now it’s a her) that the 29 cents per acre assessment was perfectly legal. And internal borrowing of large sums of money from other departments that are possibly state or federal funds for roads? Is that good governance? Better get my Public Records Requests ready to go.
