From Mono County to Santa Clarita Valley : Water Plan Could Provide a Bailout

The Castaic Lake Water Agency is looking 270 miles northward to Mono County as a possible water source for future residents of the burgeoning Santa Clarita Valley.

Mono County ranchers have proposed a plan to sell to the agency what they termed surplus water amounting to between 12,000 and 20,000 acre-feet annually. The latter figure would be enough to supply water for up to 28,500 households a year.

But the plan has been met with suspicion both by residents and officials of Mono County, who have long been angered by the massive exportation of its most precious natural resource to the city of Los Angeles.

“People here don’t have to look far to see it,” said Glenn Thompson, chairman of the Mono County Board of Supervisors, referring to the water that flows south through the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s aqueduct.

“Treachery has been used historically, so there’s fear that treachery will be used here,” said Thompson of the DWP’s secretive scheme early in the century to buy up Mono County ranches for their water.

5 to 10 Years Down the Road

If the plan becomes a reality at all, it still is five to 10 years down the road, Thompson said.

“Some of Mono County’s concerns would have to be answered,” said Robert C. Sagehorn, general manager of the water agency. “The supervisors would have to be convinced of the plan’s benefits. The Castaic Lake Water Agency is not interested in being in an adversary position in obtaining our water. There has to be more understanding of the benefits of the plan.”

Sagehorn said the agency, which is charged with supplying water to the fast-growing Santa Clarita Valley, is looking for water sources other than its existing ones--local ground water and the water in its annual entitlement from the State Water Project.

“We have enough water now to supply the population until about 1991 or so,” he said in an interview earlier this year. After that, “we could run out,” he said.

Estimates indicate that 115,000 acre-feet of water will be needed to accommodate the 270,000 residents that the Santa Clarita Area General Plan predicts will be living in the Santa Clarita Valley by 2010. There are 120,000 now.

Even more water will be needed in 2010 if all the projects now pending before the city of Santa Clarita and the Los Angeles Regional Planning Commission are built.

As of now, delivery of only 52,500 acre-feet is assured.

Under its 1962 charter, the water agency is entitled to buy 41,500 acre-feet of water from the state each year. However, until the State Water Project is completed, the agency can be sure of obtaining only 20,000 acre-feet annually. Ground water supplies amount to 32,500 acre-feet a year.

Rancher Martin Andrews, who proposed the Mono County plan, said: “I’m going to talk to everyone I can about the proposal. The people here are awfully suspicious. They’re concerned about, ‘Is the ground water basin going to be lower?’ The answer is no.”

Andrews’ plan depends on three ranches’ turning to crops that don’t require as much water as alfalfa, which he said wastes water. The ranchers, in the Hammil and Benton valleys near Bishop, agree with the plan, Andrews said.

“Each bale of alfalfa grown took about 17,000 gallons of water to grow,” Andrews said. “The typical hay truck passing down Highway 6 from Hammil Valley through Bishop carries the equivalent of 500 average motel swimming pools of water.

“What that really translates to on the average is about 6 acre-feet of water per acre of alfalfa grown. Potatoes and garlic use half that much.”

It takes about seven-tenths of an acre-foot of water to serve an average household for a year, according to water officials.

The ground water tables on the ranches, which use their own wells for irrigation, have been getting lower every year as a result of the alfalfa farming, Andrews said.

“So, we took a look at our water policies and recognized that one of the state’s last water resources was the water farmers are using wastefully,” he said.

Selling surplus water that will be available through the growing of crops such as potatoes, garlic, evergreen shrubs, apples and ornamental plants not only will preserve water but will be more profitable to area farmers as well, Andrews said.

“Several farms have gone out of business,” he said. “And, now, the biggest ranches in the area need some help.”

Andrews said he sought out the Castaic Lake Water Agency as a buyer for the ranch water.

“I started interviewing water agencies I thought would be sensitive to the needs of the area,” he said. “I came across the Castaic Lake Water Agency.”

Andrews called the agency “a modern, socially responsible organization that wishes to be sensitive and flexible in its negotiations.”

The Castaic agency’s attorney advised Andrews that the agency was not going to repeat the same program as the Los Angeles DWP by buying the ranches, Andrews said.

“What we’re proposing is to form a first joint powers agreement on water between Mono County and Castaic Lake,” he said. “Mono County would maintain control over the water.”

The county also would have an enhanced tax base through more profitable farms if the ranches are permitted to sell the water, Andrews said.

Sagehorn said the project also would require the negotiating of an agreement with the DWP to transport the water into Southern California. The Mono County water actually would go to Los Angeles consumers, whereas Santa Clarita Valley residents would get a corresponding increase in Metropolitan Water District water delivered through the State Water Project.

A DWP spokesman said the Los Angeles utility is neutral on the proposal at this stage.

Under a 1986 bill written by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City), a water agency cannot reasonably withhold the use of its aqueduct to transport another agency’s water. A 1987 bill by Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) broadened the Castaic agency’s power, among other things, enabling it to purchase surplus ranch water.

Sagehorn said the agency also is pursuing the possible purchase of a cotton farm in Kern County, which through the Devil’s Den Water District is entitled to 12,700 acre-feet a year.

“That, too, is five or six years away,” he said.

Before anything is decided in Mono County, Supervisor Thompson said, a hydrologist’s detailed report and a ground water study will be required.

“The board held a meeting on the proposal and received a lot of public testimony, most of it negative,” Thompson said. “From the point of view of the county, this proposal is in its very early stages.”

Whether there really will be excess water after farmers complete an “extremely expensive changeover of crops” is questionable, he said.

“There also is a question whether the ground water is being replenished now through a natural process,” he added. “I tend to think it is. There may be excess.”

And, Thompson said, county officials must be convinced that the Castaic agency has laid all its cards on the table. Supervisors became suspicious of the agency last week when another bill by Wright was scheduled to be heard by the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee.

The bill, which provides legislative reinforcement so that the agency can contract with water retailers, contained a provision giving the agency powers of eminent domain.

“We’ve asked Cathie Wright to omit that from the bill,” Sagehorn said. “That was a mistake.”

Still, Thompson said, Mono County will be well represented when the bill is scheduled for hearing again Wednesday.

In addition, Thompson said, Mono County officials are suspicious because one of the Castaic Lake agency’s board members is employed by the DWP.

“I could have sold out with the DWP,” Andrews said. “But we would like to do this right.”