A Way of Life May Be Eroding

Water flows freely in this fading town of retirees, tucked next to the Tuolumne River and surrounded by yellowed grassland as far as the eye can see. Most folks are home around the clock, flushing toilets, washing dishes and watering lawns. Sprinklers sometimes spray for hours, and one homeowner hoses the street daily in a compulsive battle with dust.

And why not? The price is certainly right. La Grange residents have been charged just $1.50 a month for water for nearly 80 years. That’s possibly the lowest rate in the state and, even at that, many toss their bills in the trash as unjustified.

The water is theirs to waste, they claim, citing historic rights and an 81-year-old contract. But the era of virtually free, un-metered water may be coming to an end. Officials who have delivered the water since 1921 are pushing to install meters and eventually bill residents according to their use.

The stakes in this tiny Sierra Nevada foothill community (pop. fewer than 200) may seem small. But the squabble--which has landed in Stanislaus County Superior Court--reflects the unblinking animosity toward water regulation in this part of the state, even during extreme drought.

Water is seen as a God-given right by many in the Central Valley and Sierra foothills. Key communities--Modesto, Fresno and Sacramento among them--don’t meter residents, so the use of water goes unchecked. An 82-year-old amendment to Sacramento’s City Charter forbids the gadgets altogether, and residents simply pay a flat fee.

Modesto has installed meters on new residential construction as required by a decade-old state law, but the devices whirl, unread, as ornamental as wind chimes.

The aging inhabitants of La Grange say they are fighting to protect rights forged by their forbearers. But the pressure to change is mounting as the old rights--and the culture of entitlement passed down with them--increasingly collide with modern realities of growth, drought, pollution and strict environmental standards.

Key California water laws have often sprung from tiny out-of-the-way places, and La Grange’s case raises provocative questions about how airtight age-old water pacts are in the face of new pressures. As sacrosanct as senior water rights are, since 1928 the state Constitution has required that all water use be “reasonable and beneficial.” No court has yet ruled that a lack of metering is in itself unreasonable, but legal experts believe a court very well could. The question of who should pay for the rising costs of water treatment could also be resolved by La Grange’s case, sending ripples through much larger disputes elsewhere.

“It shows how these ancient rights can crop up in the 21st century and lead to big conflagrations,” said Brian Gray, a Hastings Law School water rights expert who is not involved with the case. “There is a visceral feeling: ‘These are our rights, they’re the most senior and that’s the end of the case.’ And it’s not the end of the case.”

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Gold mining made La Grange--placer mining, then hydraulic mining and finally dredging, which turned the rivers upside down, spewing massive rock tailings.

The town thrived, fed by its claim to the first water down the Tuolumne River. Once the county seat, thousands of Italian, French, Irish and Chinese immigrants crammed its streets. The Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts, the state’s first public water districts, were born in 1887. They built the La Grange Dam, then hailed as the world’s tallest.

The water ditches and accompanying rights changed hands several times. But each transfer--including the last in 1921 to the Turlock and Modesto irrigation districts, for construction of the Don Pedro Dam--guaranteed “the right of the inhabitants of the town of La Grange to water for domestic and garden purposes and for the needs of the town.”

The Turlock district would manage the La Grange water system. An irrigation purveyor and electric utility, it serves no other residential water customers. La Grange doesn’t even fall within its boundaries, so residents aren’t voting constituents. But the marriage was made.

The great mining dredges’ 24-hour squeal fell silent in 1948, and the town withered. Still, water flowed to La Grange, feeding its worn cluster of homes, the Fire Department, cemetery, post office, county park and public restrooms. It is now a shadow of its former self--one bar, two general stores and the ghosts of history.

“The water is about all this little town really has, plus the rodeo in the spring,” said Grover McCoy, 72, who operated the town water system for 31 years before retiring in 1994.

For decades, Turlock Irrigation District officials made only token efforts to impose controls on La Grange. They enacted the $1.50 charge in 1926.

Then, in 1983, district officials quietly drew a town boundary, which locals said unfairly limited growth and cut out properties that had long received water.

The worst came last year, when the district approved rules to install meters, force conservation and cut off service for nonpayment.

A treatment plant built in 1996 to meet tougher state standards cost $100,000, a sum that would take more than 82 years to recoup--assuming all 67 La Grange customers paid their monthly $1.50.

District officials acknowledge that the 1921 agreement mandates free water and delivery to La Grange but reason that rates could and should be hiked to pay for treatment, unheard of when the deal was inked, district lawyer Joe Fagundes said.

La Grange residents’ profligate water use also strains the limited system, said district spokesman Tony Walker. Average peak use per household tops 1,820 gallons a day, well above the state average of 1,200 to 1,400 gallons, Walker said. (That’s more than three times the average daily use of Los Angeles consumers, who pay an average of $25 a month.)

“We’re constantly having to refill [the tanks] because people are constantly wasting water,” Walker said. “I think they’re trying to make a statement.”

To residents, who contest the district’s figures, the likely rate hikes amount to a bank charging a mortgage on property it doesn’t own.

“They made the deal and now, 80 years later, they want to renege on it,” said Bob Varain, 55, a rancher and dog groomer. “If they don’t like it, tear down the dam. Without us, they wouldn’t be.”

The first test of the old water pact may come in the court fight between the district and Alan Zanker, 39, a mandarin orange farmer.

Zanker’s land came with a historic right to irrigation water. But he has feuded with the district for years over the extent of his rights to that water and to the town’s drinking water. In 1999, Zanker ran a line from a water box that was inside the district boundary to a new home outside the line.

On an August night in 2000, as the town water committee met around Zanker’s dining table, he was served with a lawsuit for taking water unlawfully. Committee members agreed right then that Zanker’s fight was theirs; they would seek the town’s support to weigh in on Zanker’s behalf. Last year, a Superior Court judge allowed the town to formally intervene in the case.

“They’d be setting a precedent, and we couldn’t let them do that,” said McCoy, who is leading the fight against his former employer.

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Talk of metering and rising water rates is considered sacrilege in much of the Central Valley and Sierra foothills, where liberal, mining-era water rights have reigned supreme.

But things are changing. The gap between water supply and demand in California is projected to total 2.4 million acre-feet during even the non-drought years by 2020, according to the Water Education Foundation.

Ground water levels have dropped, driving up the cost of pumping, said Dave Scruggs, senior water use analyst with the state Department of Water Resources.

In places like La Grange, which rely on surface water, stricter drinking water standards have increased treatment costs. Once deemed drinkable straight from the ditch, La Grange’s water now must undergo five treatment processes and multiple tests for bacteria to satisfy state regulators.

“A lot of people used to getting cheap water are having to wake up and realize it’s a resource we’re going to have to start paying for,” Scruggs said.

Metering is considered a crucial first step to conservation. Even cities surrounding Sacramento are now taking the plunge, compelled by contract with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and by the Sacramento Water Forum Agreement, a pact signed in 2000. The San Juan Water District recently metered residents in Fair Oaks, Citrus Heights and Granite Bay. And Folsom city officials approved a similar move.

But opposition can be fierce.

“It’s kind of akin to moonshiners and revenuers,” said Ron Stork, senior policy advocate with Sacramento-based Friends of the River, which supports metering. “In areas that have historically been un-metered, it’s considered a birthright.”

Folsom’s proposal has prompted a November ballot initiative that would amend the City Charter to forbid mandatory metering.

As in La Grange, most of Folsom has benefited from liberal rights secured before state water regulators began to assert their powers in 1914.

“Old-timers remember the acquisition of the water right and the promise that there would never be meters in Folsom,” said Sara Myers, a former city councilwoman who is leading the water meter revolt.

But many Californians have come to believe that the old rights shouldn’t trump wise resource management.

“There’s a social contract that comes with” water delivery and treatment, Stork said. “It’s essentially the conflict between public good and private good.”

The courts may find in the La Grange case that “a deal is a deal,” said Gray, the Hastings law professor. “With the benefit of more than 70 years of hindsight, maybe it’s a bad deal, but it’s the deal you made.”

But the courts must also attend to the “reasonable and beneficial” standard for water use. A consensus among conservationists, water regulators and purveyors is growing that the common good might trump individual rights.

“That’s the plight of California: How do you adapt to growth?” said Gerald Johns, chief of the Department of Water Resources’ water transfers office. “Conserving water and reducing treatment costs is a benefit to everyone.”

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Today, the history of La Grange’s old mining days is laid out in a dusty two-room museum. The gold dredge celebrated as the world’s largest stands moored in a La Grange field.

But some here have fleeting hopes of a second boom--based in part on their precious water. Locals see subdivisions creeping ever closer, catering to Bay Area defectors and commuters. And with a new University of California campus planned for Merced--about 30 miles away--things could change fast.

“I could build two more homes on my property,” McCoy said. “I think eventually this town will be something, and I think the [water] district has seen that coming, full speed ahead.”

So, ever since leaving Zanker’s house that August night, residents have been on a mission to protect their water.

McCoy and Varain drove to Nevada to scour for gold-era documents, and one trip to Sonora yielded a 1917 judgment upholding the town’s senior water right.

When the district began installing meters last year, workers only managed to complete the post office and three homes before townspeople summoned the sheriff.

“I told them that when they had a paper signed by a judge saying they had the legal right to do it, they could come back, but until then, ‘Get out,’ ” said Glenn Varain, 81, Bob’s father.

For now, a temporary injunction bars the district from moving ahead with the metering and other conservation measures. A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 27 on the topic of the town boundary.

Meanwhile, residents are scrambling to pay fees, $30,000 and growing, from their Stockton water attorney. Twice, residents have poured into the Odd Fellows hall to feast--at $6.50 each--on spaghetti cooked by McCoy’s wife, Evelyn. The wives sold their old flower vases, each containing an iridescent fighter fish.

Believers like Bob Varain still toss aside their puny water bills and gird for the fight ahead.

“Who’s to say that in 10 years there won’t be 5,000 people here again?” Varain said.

“I look at it as a property right. It makes my property more valuable, and those of us who stuck it out here deserve it.”