Officials See Resource Control as Vital

Not since the big California drought of 1977 and ’78 has Don White’s Midway Drilling and Pump Co. been so busy.

So many farmers and water purveyors are ordering deeper wells or tapping ground water for the first time that White’s Saticoy company is booked with drilling jobs through December.

“Everyone’s got water problems now,� said White, the raspy-voiced co-owner of the only company in the county capable of drilling large irrigation or municipal wells.

The five-year drought has placed unprecedented demand on ground water, driving some basins to record lows, drying up wells and forcing drastic cutbacks in imported water. Recent rains are expected to ease those cutbacks and raise ground-water tables by several feet, but experts say one normal rain year will not make up for five dry ones.

Already, decades of overpumping have allowed seawater to seep into two aquifers below the Oxnard Plain, threatening important drinking-water supplies.

Government action is needed now to manage ground-water resources countywide before they are pumped into permanent destruction, many county leaders and conservation experts agree. But despite weeks of emergency meetings among water agencies and cities, no solution is in the works.

“There is a crying need for better cooperation in the county,� said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau and a member of a countywide water task force. “With each water meeting you go to, the need becomes more and more evident. But there are kingdoms and fiefdoms and jealousy, none of which serves the people of this county.�

Lee Waddle of the Ventura County Resource Conservation District said the time to move on countywide water management is now, while public interest is high.

“We need a water authority to work on big projects like bringing in state water and developing reclaimed (sewer) water,� he said. “But it looks at this point as though there is not a wholehearted spirit of cooperation.� He compared water agency leaders to “badgers retreating into their holes, and each fighting to defend itself.�

Experts say Ventura County’s underground basins hold about 5 million acre-feet of water, although much of it is brackish or too deep to bring to the surface. Since the 1940s, cities and farmers have pumped out 1 million acre-feet of water more than rain and recharge programs have replenished. Experts estimate that the deficit has increased by 100,000 acre-feet in the last two years alone.

With that pattern of overuse and with county population growth of 26.4% (to 669,000 people) over the last 10 years, the county’s current water supply crisis was inevitable even without the drought, Supervisor John K. Flynn said.

“The drought simply moves us along faster,� Flynn said.

In an effort to find regional solutions to the county’s water problems, Flynn formed an emergency task force of 50 county officials, water managers and business and agricultural interests.

So far, the task force has agreed that county supervisors should speak for the county as a whole in Sacramento to seek drought-relief funding from the state. And task force subcommittees are drafting a “drought action plan� that would provide guidelines for conservation programs throughout the county.

But the group has not progressed beyond innocuous actions that require neither additional funding nor the ceding of authority by individual agencies. Some say it never will. Any talk of establishing a water authority or a countywide ground-water management agency to control pumping remains stalled.

“Eventually, we’re going to have to propose a countywide bond program� to fund solutions, Flynn said.

Gina Manchester, general manager of Camrosa Municipal Water District, which serves eastern Camarillo and the Santa Rosa Valley, said the task force helps the public image of the water purveyors but provides few other services.

“My perception is that this task force is trying to create bonding among the water purveyors and business people to communicate a unified front to the public,� she said. “But water purveyors out there are very protective of their territory, and they don’t want to have someone create an entity with authority over them.�

Managers at two of the county’s three largest water districts, Calleguas Municipal Water District in the eastern county and Casitas Municipal Water District in western Ventura and the Ojai Valley, said they believe that water agencies should solve their own problems.

“We are not interested in creating multiple layers of government with new staffs and new expenses,� Casitas Manager John Johnson said.

Johnson and the Casitas board support the proposed formation of an Ojai Valley ground-water management agency with limited powers. But he said that agency, which must be created through an act of the Legislature, will have only the staff and funding donated by Casitas and other contributors.

Some water leaders believe the Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency, an authority created by the Legislature in 1982, should carry the responsibility of countywide ground-water management. The agency now regulates basins beneath the Oxnard Plain from east Ventura to Point Mugu and the Santa Rosa Valley to Moorpark.

That leaves unprotected the basins beneath the Santa Clara River Valley and the Ojai, Simi and Conejo valleys. The agency, which is staffed by county employees, would have to seek legislation to expand its boundaries. But that is a move no one is ready to make.

The Groundwater Management Agency last year ordered pumpers in its jurisdiction to reduce extractions 25% by 2010, but rejected a staff proposal to speed up the timetable to cut pumping substantially next year.

The board, made up of three growers, Flynn and a Ventura city councilman, allowed a moratorium on new wells to expire two months ago. No move is afoot to reinstate the ordinance, despite the increased drilling activity.

“If we try to limit new wells, we will run up against some very stiff legal challenges,� said Bob Quinn, manager of the water resources division of the county’s Public Works Agency and coordinator for the Groundwater Management Agency.

Something must be done soon to regulate pumping throughout the county, said Frederick J. Gientke, general manager of United Water Conservation District, the county’s other large water agency. United replenishes but does not regulate ground water in the Santa Clara River Valley and the Oxnard Plain.

Recent measurements show that the Santa Paula and Mound basins in United’s district are at record lows. Yet there are no limits on the amount of water that can be extracted from them.

“The ground-water conditions are too critical,� Gientke said. “You can’t go into the ground-water bucket without an impact on the basin and on neighboring wells.�

But Gientke’s board of directors also backed away from a leadership position on ground-water management recently. The board rejected a staff proposal to move from conservation to management.

Meanwhile, the rate at which new and replacement wells are drilled continues to quicken. The county issued about 100 permits to drill wells in all of 1985, hydrologist John Turner said. It has already issued that many permits in the first two months of 1991.

Some of the permits are for wells to monitor ground-water quality. Many are replacement wells that had to be dug deeper because of the falling level of the aquifers. But a significant number of them are new wells, Turner said.

“Never in history have I ever seen this kind of activity,� Turner said. “This will increase the amount of ground water that is pumped on a permanent basis, because those people will have to justify the expense over the long term.�