War of the Wells : Water Shortage Turns the Rural Haven of Green Valley Into a Town Divided

Call it a case of the American Dream gone dry. Ken and Eileen Bowman, both bus drivers for the Los Angeles Unified School District, were fed up with the smog and the traffic around their Northridge rental home. So they came to Green Valley, a rustic community of 1,200 people nestled in the mountains north of Santa Clarita.

But the continuing drought in Southern California has transformed the Bowmans’ rural town from a retreat from civilization into an outpost living on the edge.

Water problems are worse than anywhere else in Los Angeles County. The water table has dropped 70 feet since 1987 and is predicted to go bone dry next year.

As a result, the town’s water district, which since June, 1986, had limited new water hookups to one a month, just last week voted not to issue any more water-meter permits--required for access to the municipal water supply--until the current water shortage subsides.

The water shortage that has been inconvenient elsewhere in Southern California has been devastating in Green Valley. Increasing numbers of residents are sinking their own wells, though they know the chances of finding water are slim. And the once-peaceful community has been divided into warring camps of old-timers with water and newcomers lusting for it.

“You’re going back like the Hatfields and McCoys,” said Robert Johnson, a Los Angeles fruit jelly sales manager who moved with his wife to Green Valley 10 years ago. “You’re splitting up the community.”

Green Valley’s water shortage “is definitely worse” than that of the rest of Los Angeles County, said Fred Cannon, a director of the Green Valley County Water District. “We have absolutely no outside source. If we get to the situation where our wells run out, then we’re going to have to truck it in. And I don’t know of anybody who’s in that position.”

The Metropolitan Water District announced in March that it would be able to supply 92% of its Southern California region’s needs this year, while the Green Valley water district will supply only 44% of what is needed there, Cannon said.

The Bowmans were looking forward to moving into their dream house and had been on a list that would have allowed them to hook up to the town wells in May, 1991. Facing rising interest rates, the couple decided last winter to start construction on their house early and to install a temporary, 5,000-gallon water tank to get them through the interim period.

They moved in last week, only to learn of the water board’s decision to halt new hook-ups indefinitely.

“I sat down and cried,” Eileen Bowman said.

Now, the couple’s new home looks like a cross between an alpine retreat and an industrial complex. At one end of the property is an attractive three-bedroom house with bay windows, salmon-colored siding and white trim. At the other end is a stainless-steel tank connected to fat pipes and mounted on a thick concrete block.

The Bowmans’ situation is not unique. As Green Valley’s water shortage becomes more acute--the board reported this month that the water line in one of the town’s five wells dropped from 25 feet to 95 feet below ground level between 1987 and April, 1990--more residents are taking drastic measures to reduce the amount of municipal well water they use.

Some, like the Bowmans, have installed private water tanks. But not everyone in the middle-class community can afford that luxury.

Clem Moreau, a builder who has lived in Green Valley since 1969, uses every drop of the “gray water” from his washing machine more than once. He has rigged up an elaborate maze of rubber hoses and plastic barrels to save the precious--if not quite pristine--liquid.

Moreau pumps the dirty water from his washing machine out the laundry room window and into one of two 50-gallon blue plastic barrels sitting on the ground outside.

When Moreau wants to water his plants, he simply removes the rubber tubing from the barrel and, in its place, drops a small electric pump attached to his garden hose. With the flick of a switch, the murky mixture of sweat, water and soap--biodegradable, of course--is sucked out of the barrel and sprayed onto the ground.

But there are problems with the practice.

“It’s both illegal and it is unsafe,” said Jack Petralia, director of environmental protection for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. The use of gray water violates the county plumbing and health codes and may violate state law as well, he said.

Of particular concern to health officials is the high viral and bacterial content of household waste water, Petralia said. Gray water bacterial counts often “look almost identical to sewage,” he said.

In response to its severe water shortage, Santa Barbara County this year legalized the use of gray water on outdoor vegetation. Petralia’s department is in the process of preparing a report for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on whether similar action should be taken here.

The water debate has divided Green Valley into two general camps. On one side is the Green Valley County Water District, whose board governs the use of the town’s five wells and is the only elected body in town. On the other side is the Green Valley Citizens Committee on Water, a month-old grass-roots group which argues that the board is not doing enough to conserve water.

A history of disputes over water policy led the citizens in January, 1987, to vote to remove the water district’s five directors from office and to replace them with new members.

But the battles continue. The committee presented a petition on July 18 demanding that the commissioners prohibit further building in Green Valley until the water shortage ends.

Although the commission did vote not to grant new water-meter permits, it refused to prohibit construction on 31 Green Valley lots for which permits already have been issued. And the board approved an exception to the building moratorium for those property owners who can prove they would suffer undue hardship by being denied a permit.

Members of the citizens committee believe those exceptions make the building moratorium too easy for property owners to circumvent. “We’re not sure that they did anything but sign their name to a bunch of gobbledygook,” said Jim Steele, one of the original organizers of the water district in 1978.

Jeffrey Rankin, a water commissioner for 10 months and a Green Valley resident for 27 years, argues that it would not be fair for the board to lock up the 31 water meters after their owners paid to have them installed. “I just think it’s unfair to come in and take that away,” he said. “I think people are panicking right now.”

But the citizens committee members say the board’s rejection of their demands only has increased their will. The group has organized a vigilance committee to determine just who in town is using too much water.

If the citizens committee is an insurgent army fighting a war in Green Valley, then Jim Steele, who sits in a rocking chair with his cowboy hat shading his face from the sun and his black leather boots caked with dust, is its general, plotting strategy against a water board he says has failed to recognize the gravity of the crisis.

One of Steele’s most important field commanders is Jean Nelson, 64, who says she has the time to wage the water war because a disability has left her unable to work. But Nelson exhibited no handicap one afternoon last week, when she stalked resolutely onto Steele’s property and gave her commander a battle report.

Nelson had spent the afternoon driving around town, checking to see who had recently drilled their own wells. The committee opposes the practice because it fears that further drilling by private citizens will deplete the town’s underground water supply.

The citizens committee is considering suing the water board to force those homeowners with more than one connection to the municipal water supply--residents who, in the vernacular of Green Valley, “double dip”--to limit themselves to one hookup, Steele said.

As Steele had suspected, the information Nelson collected on her drive suggested that many residents have found small amounts of water in their private wells.

Nelson was particularly incensed at a woman who admitted she recently drilled a well to provide water for her garden. “All she’s doing is robbing the table to do her fruit trees!” Nelson thundered.

Some residents resent the citizens committee’s tactics. “Who are these few people to say that you have the right to destroy these little people’s lives?” asked Saveria Vander Galien, owner of the Green Valley Inn, the only restaurant in town.

As residents continue to hurl invective around the sylvan town, both the water board and the citizens committee are digging in their heels for a protracted fight. They seem to be reaching an agreement on the need to curb double-dipping, however.

County attorneys have said they cannot prohibit residents from drilling their own wells. But the board has begun talking with its lawyers about ways to stop private well-digging. “It’s like a big bowl of water, this valley, and another well is like another straw drawing water out of it,” Rankin said.

The water board also is considering the costly option of joining the Antelope Valley East Kern, the aqueduct system that brings water to nearby communities. The board decided several years ago not to join the system, but the increasing severity of the water shortage has led commissioners to reconsider, Rankin said.

Residents say the rancor over water is a sign that the very nature of the small town is changing.

“We’ve had sort of a micro-community--cut away from the rest of the world,” said Dorothy Mays, a Green Valley resident for 22 years. “Maybe that’s what we see disappearing.”