The Water that Makes Local Food Possible is at Risk.

By Scott Steward

Add your voice. Contact your County Supervisor and our Water Board (YSGA). Best to make your request before Monday May 19th to place a moratorium on wells in the Yolo focus area that includes Hungry Hollow.  But don't stop making this request on the 19th.

Everyone's hands are tied except the most important hands, yours. The public needs to insist on a well moratorium in the Yolo focus area in order to greatly speed the legal considerations that the county must make at the Department of Environmental Health and with County Council to develop the legal language (based on water table drop data from the YSGA) and other criteria to declare a moratorium.  Here is the problem: this cannot take years as the water and the west Yolo farms are drying up. 

The county, through our elected Trustee/Supervisors, has the ONLY authority (not the YSGA) to place a moratorium on the Hungry Hollow focus area. The county will not do this on its own – we need public pressure, or we will lose the ability to water our own food. The majority of Supervisors welcome the pressure to enact a sustainable water policy.  We can win this. We need to speed it all up!

The Yolo County Supervisors are governed by the State Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), requiring local agencies to form groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs).  SGMA makes it clear….

"extraction by the proposed well would "not be inconsistent with any sustainable groundwater management the program established in any applicable Groundwater Sustainability Plan adopted by the Groundwater Sustainability Agency and would not decrease the likelihood of achieving a sustainability goal for the basin covered by such a plan."

Years of effort from the Concerned Citizens group have not curtailed a consistent reluctance on the part of the County and our Department of Environmental Health to establish a sustainable water policy. This same question has been bouncing around for at least two years.  Now we are facing irreparable loss. Are we at that place where the public finds it necessary to claim that the County has neglected its duty to take steps to sustain our groundwater?  Is that what it will take?

The Concerned Citizens, made up of Hungry Hollow farmers and residents in Esparto, Winters, Davis and Woodland  (where the threat to our Yolo groundwater subbasin has already been demonstrated), lost their appeal for the county to reconsider an obviously inappropriate well applicant (Cobram) on April 8th (described here)

On May 19th from 3:00 to 5:00 pm at a Woodland Police Department meeting room.  In Annie Main's own words.

"It is very important that we make comments in person or via a letter to the YSGA Board meeting on or before their Monday May 19 3-5 at the Woodland Police Station.. This is an opportunity to voice our concerns to the permitting process that the YSGA plays, the hydrogeologic review process, and ask the YSGA Board to step up and set procedures in place so their staff can actually implement their authority with defending groundwater sustainability.

I would like to suggest that one of our goals that needs to happen NOW  as part of moving forward is to ask the Yolo County Board of Supervisors to set a moratorium in the focus areas of Yolo County on historic non irrigated land. This would be in place until there is data, and clear knowledge of the water budget and determine the ‘sustainable yield in these parts of the sensitive subbasin."

The Concerned Citizens have a framework that works with the County and our Groundwater Sustainability Agency, the Yolo Subbasin Groundwater Agency.  There are 10 requests in the framework that have been sent to the YSGA Board and our County Supervisors.  These requests align with the YSGA goals and are likely refinements that the YSGA is considering and should be received favorably.  Of those 10 requests, the request to place a well moratorium in the Yolo focus areas is, in my view, the most critical.

Please support the following request.  You can attend the 3:00 YSGA Board Meeting at the Woodland Police Station (I assume the station has a meeting room).  AND. – send in an email to your County Supervisor and to the YSGA Board

"REQUEST OF THE YSGA BOARD- The Hydrogeologic Reviews are using disparate information and using this lack of information to make their decisions.  Current hydrogeologic data is inadequate specifically in the Focus Areas to the task of determining the effects of continuous additional extraction. Until adequate data is available new wells cannot be approved using hydrogeologic review –Ask for a Yolo County Moratorium in the focus areas."  Concerned Citizens.