Plans for New Town Stir Up Water Issues

The proposed “new town” of Rio Mesa, envisioned as a sprawling development along 12 scenic miles of the San Joaquin River, has cheated death more than once.

To critics, its flaws are obvious. The planned community of 100,000 residents, three resort hotels and four golf courses would sit atop a depleted ground-water table and transform farms and riparian habitat into asphalt and back yards. A more environmentally sensitive site would be hard to find in the area.

But the land’s owners, some of the wealthiest developers in Central California, have pressed ahead with their vision of a rural Irvine amid the fields. When the project seemed to die aborning, they got the children’s hospital in Fresno to commit to move to the new town.

When Rio Mesa needed an 11th-hour resuscitation, the developers persuaded the University of California regents to select the site as a finalist for a future San Joaquin Valley campus.

That Rio Mesa now seems on the verge of happening is a tribute to persistence and vision--critics would say blindness--and a liberal reading of federal water contracts and state conflict-of-interest laws.

The Madera County Grand Jury is investigating if there is enough water available to sustain the bold plan, and questions persist about a Madera County supervisor whose father is a key landowner in Rio Mesa. A San Joaquin River watchdog group has filed suit alleging that the county--in a bid to lure the university--approved a Rio Mesa plan based on shoddy traffic, air quality and water projections.

All this could not have come at a worse time for local boosters. The UC Board of Regents is expected today to choose between Rio Mesa and a site 40 miles north in Merced for the university’s 10th campus. The $600-million campus may not be built for decades, but the site selection alone could make or break Rio Mesa.

“We have been poked and prodded every way imaginable,” said Dan Fitzpatrick, Rio Mesa’s chief executive. “And we’ve passed the test every step of the way.”

Not so fast, critics say. “The whole thing--the new town, the hospital, the highway widening, the campus--seem to work in perfect concert,” said Russell Fey, a longtime professor of urban planning at Cal State Fresno. “But in reality it’s a house of cards that collapses on the water issue alone.”

Because ground water is in short supply, landowners along the San Joaquin want to use their “first right” claim to river water for Rio Mesa. The problem is that their contracts with the federal government, some dating back 50 years, were intended for crops, not suburban sprawl.

But they contend that they have found a loophole that hinges on the word domestic. The contracts state that landowners along the river can take as much water as is reasonable and beneficial for farm and “domestic purposes.” Whether it is one farmhouse or a new city of 30,000 houses, apartments and hotel and university dormitory rooms, they argue that domestic is domestic.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees the water contracts, disputes that interpretation and fears the consequences if other landowners downstream choose to tap the river for their own urban dreams.

Whether the bureau can attempt to stop the conversion of federal farm water into municipal water is not clear. But bureau officials say they will not stand in the way if a third party sues Rio Mesa and claims harm to its share of river water.

“What we’re talking about,” said the bureau’s Jon Anderson, “is the makings of a water war.”

It is easy to see what attracted bureaucrats and planners to Rio Mesa. It offers one of the more dramatic backdrops in the San Joaquin Valley, a vista that takes in Table Top Mountain and foothills studded with oak, vernal pools and the river itself.

It is not suburban growth from Madera 15 miles away that is squeezing the site, but the sprawl of Fresno knocking at its back door. Through a bit-by-bit march across 10 miles of farmland, Fresno now sits at the river’s edge.

Madera County officials say they should be applauded for approaching growth in a comprehensive way through a planned community that offers jobs and housing. And they emphasize that not a single permit will be issued until developers can point to a specific water, sewer and traffic system--and the financing to underwrite it.

“If we were doing this 40 acres at a time, no one would be complaining,” said Madera County Planning Director Leonard Garoupa. “The size of this project alone should not be used against us.”

Even with its villages and greenbelts, Rio Mesa might have died of inertia if not for Richard Gunner, a developer with 1,000 acres of farmland along the river. In 1991, Gunner donated a 50-acre chunk to Valley Children’s Hospital, which was looking to move from its cramped quarters in Fresno.

His act of philanthropy had the immediate effect of skyrocketing the value of his adjacent land. Still, Madera County lacked the sewer, water and roads to serve the future hospital.

County officials couldn’t very well say no to a prestigious 500-bed hospital and the growing prospect of a UC San Joaquin. So they seized on Rio Mesa--and its developer fees and new tax base--as a way to finance the necessary wider highway and other infrastructure.

With the issue framed in terms of a children’s hospital, safer highway and new university, county officials haven’t exactly been inclined to ask hard questions, critics say. The tangled issue of water is a case in point.

In the name of California agriculture, the federal government dammed the San Joaquin River in the 1940s and corralled its outflow into irrigation canals. The Bureau of Reclamation agreed to compensate the farmers along the river’s edge by ensuring a reasonable release of water from Friant Dam for agriculture and domestic purposes.

Now, half a century later, some of the riverbank farmers have become Rio Mesa developers. In selling the new town idea to Madera County, they have maintained that they will use only 10% more surface and ground water than is now used on crops.

The 10% figure was provided by the environmental consultant on Rio Mesa, the Keith Cos., a private engineering firm out of Costa Mesa.

But Sandra Jacobs, who authored the Keith Cos. report, acknowledged that her estimate of current water use for crops was based on thirdhand information. She said she took the numbers from an Irvine land planner who had taken the numbers from another consultant. “I’m confident of the water use numbers,” Jacobs said. “We verified everything.”

But the engineer who came up with the original water figures said no one from Keith Cos. ever checked with him to determine that his method involved guesswork. UC planners relied on those figures in their own environmental assessment of the area.

Critics say the landowners have overstated the current water use on crops to minimize the impact of future urban diversions from the San Joaquin River. They also point out that the environmental report assumes that river water can be legally diverted onto 7,000 acres of Rio Mesa development. But much of this land extends off the river and may not be eligible for diversions.

“They may be including land [in Rio Mesa] that is not truly riparian land,” said Richard Moss, general manager of the Friant Water Users Authority. “And if that’s the case, we won’t hesitate to sue to stop them.”

The Friant users--28 irrigation districts from Fresno to Kern County--draw 1.5 million acre-feet of river water annually for agriculture. Because the water rights of the irrigation districts take a back seat to the rights of Rio Mesa landowners, the farmers are concerned about urban diversions.

And their concern is heightened by the fact that the state has already indicated that farmers may have to give up more of their share in the name of bay-delta restoration.

The Bureau of Reclamation is bracing for a lawsuit from farming interests. “There are 215 landowners up and down the river who have contracts just like those in Rio Mesa,” said the bureau’s Anderson.

“Many of them have chosen not to exercise their right to the water. Can you imagine the impact to farming in this valley if they do?”

As for punching holes in the ground and sucking out the water, that may be a problem too. A recent state survey found that the area around Rio Mesa experienced the most severe drop in ground water in the San Joaquin Valley since 1970. One adjacent subdivision drilled 16 test wells and came up dry.

Last month, Madera County supervisors voted 5 to 0 to adopt the Rio Mesa plan. The supervisors were unmoved by the environmental report’s conclusion that the new town would cause “unavoidable adverse impacts” to ground water, traffic, air quality and the river corridor.

One of those voting yes was Supervisor Rick Jensen, whose father owns 1,400 acres of grazing land in the middle of Rio Mesa. Jensen argues that because his father is not “immediate family” as defined by state law, he has no direct financial stake in Rio Mesa and thus no conflict of interest.

Jensen, 41, acknowledged that “it is not inconceivable at all” that he could one day inherit considerable money from the project.

The state attorney general’s office confirms that it is looking into possible conflicts of interest involving Jensen as part of a larger investigation. The supervisor has been charged with felony auto theft for allegedly stealing a Ryder van in Fresno and parking it for two years on his father’s ranch. He has pleaded not guilty.