OJAI : Hookups Resumed for Water Customers

Southern California Water Co. has lifted its one-year hookup moratorium despite new evidence the Ojai aquifer is rapidly draining.

SCW President Floyd E. Wicks announced Friday that the company’s Ojai division is temporarily lifting a moratorium on new or expanded water services until the firm receives formal permission to impose such a ban from the California Public Utilities Commission.

City Manager Andrew Belknap said he will discuss the impact of the company’s decision with the City Council on Tuesday.

“It just adds urgency to developing a management plan for the Ojai basin,” Belknap said. “This attitude that anyone can drill a well whenever they want is going to get us all in trouble.”

Wicks’ announcement came at the conclusion of a two-day hearing before an administrative law judge for the Public Utilities Commission. The commission is not expected to decide on the company’s moratorium application for several months.

Commission staff members have recommended that the moratorium be denied because the Ojai aquifer has not been drained.

Also, they said, the company violated state law by imposing the moratorium in April without commission approval and by not notifying its customers that they could appeal service denials to the commission.

Wicks testified that the company adopted the moratorium after being threatened with more than $500,000 in fines by Casitas Municipal Water District if it continued to allow new hookups. The district wholesales 26% of the private company’s water for 2,700 customers in Ojai.

The company pumps the remainder from four wells in the basin and plans to drill two more wells.

Casitas officials warned of dire shortages throughout the 150-square-mile district if more pumping is allowed from the aquifer. “The more people stick straws into that basin and run that basin dry, the more people are going to come to Casitas for water,” Casitas Manager John J. Johnson said.

“It’s our opinion that the supplies throughout the district are all used up,” Johnson said.