Pressure Builds on District to Supply Water

Hidden Valley landowners need not fear that their local water agency will become a political leviathan.

The Hidden Valley Municipal Water District has no office, only one paid employee and a bureaucracy that last year operated on less than $21,000.

The agency has never supplied water, even in the leanest of times.

The district, formed to keep developers at bay, is “the last of the paper districts,” said Bob Braitman, executive director of the Ventura County Local Agency Formation Commission. The district’s 35 landowners rely solely on well water.

But five years of drought and chronic water shortages have convinced leaders of the community, south of Thousand Oaks, that a change in water policy is overdue.

“Twenty or 25 years ago, there was a pretty universal consensus that we didn’t want any outside water,” said Warren T. Jessup, a 36-year valley resident and 20-year veteran of the agency’s board.

“We’ve reached a point where the danger of continued drought, coupled with future development, makes our water table precarious. We have to bring in water.”

However, the lack of pipelines, pumps and reservoirs--rejected by Hidden Valley years ago--makes it almost impossible for water to flow into the area in the near future, officials said.

The agency is a throwback to the 1960s, when local wells were flush. It was formed on May 3, 1960, to fend off the Calleguas Municipal Water District, which at that time was considering Hidden Valley in an annexation attempt, said Frances Kimball, a former general manager at Calleguas.

Jessup said the district had a clear goal when it was formed. “We were there to preserve the rural zone,” he said.

Kimball said that “generally, a municipal water district is formed to supply water to an area, but this was formed to do the opposite. It was an unusual agency.”

The agency was almost axed in 1972 because it appeared to serve no purpose except to stop development, LAFCO’s Braitman said.

Braitman, then an administrative analyst, recommended to county supervisors that the agency be done away with. It was a battle that he eventually lost.

By any standards, it is a tiny bureaucracy. The only paid employee, the clerk of the board, uses a home telephone to answer the agency’s calls. A Newbury Park post office box functions as the agency’s address.

County tax records dating back to 1974 indicate that the district has collected about $50,000 in property taxes and interest.

Over the years, the number of landowners has grown as the large hundred-acre parcels were divided into 20- and 40-acre lots, some owned by celebrities such as Tom Selleck and Sylvester Stallone.

Today there are 35 landowners in Hidden Valley, all supplied by private wells. Potrero Road, a two-lane highway that winds through the valley, is bordered by miles of white fences that mark off horse-breeding operations.

Charles Ash, district chairman and son of Litton Industries co-founder Roy L. Ash, said his father bought the 600-acre ranch in the western end of the valley in 1957 to raise cattle, relying on rain to grow oats and hay.

The arrival of newcomers has changed the valley, said Ash, who still raises a small herd of Herefords. Large ranches have disappeared, replaced with horse-breeding operations and estates. From one of Ash’s pastures, he can see a mansion owned by Stallone.

Today, if his neighbors use too much water, pressure in the pipes is so low that it can take six hours for a well to accumulate enough water for a shower, Ash said.

Newcomers want a reliable source of water, and they do not fear the growth that imported water could bring, Ash said.

“When they turn on the tap, they want to see water coming out,” he said.

Because Hidden Valley lies outside the county’s ground-water management agency, the county does not restrict landowners from drilling new wells, said county hydrologist John Turner.

“Ground water is the only source of water they have,” he said.

Without pipelines, Hidden Valley would have to start from scratch to bring in water.

Such a move could cost millions, Ash said. He said Hidden Valley officials could issue bonds or dissolve and ask to be annexed into the Calleguas Municipal Water District, the only imported water supplier in Ventura County, and into the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

It may be the worst time for that proposal, given the heightened demand for water, said Patrick Miller, a member of both MWD’s and Calleguas’ boards of directors.

The shortage that forced Hidden Valley to look for more water makes Calleguas cautious about expansions that would add new customers. In April, Calleguas delayed a proposed annexation in Port Hueneme.

“We’ve got all we can handle right now,” Miller said.