Vote NO on the Tuscan Water District
Vote on the Tuscan Water District Like Our Future Depends on it - Because it Does
Guest Comment from Jeffrey Obser, Executive Director of the Groundwater for Butte PAC - Please Share!
Urgent Alert For All Who Care About Chico’s Future
The future of the groundwater in and around Chico is threatened by a new, privately-controlled taxing layer of government: The Tuscan Water District.
And in the election to establish this entity, you won’t get to vote - but corporations will. Votes are weighted by value of land owned. Big ag firms are setting themselves up to control the whole area’s water - with public funding!
Even though the consequences of this stealth water grab will be felt for decades, the election has received no media coverage. It is already in progress; ballots are already in mailboxes northwest and south of Chico (the city was purposely excluded from voting on any of this).
Please let your friends and neighbors know what’s afoot, especially if they live in the orchards adjacent to Chico. Only a robust “NO” vote from small property owners can possibly turn the tide.
Groundwater For Butte is a Political Action Committee formed early in 2023 to raise public awareness about the Tuscan Water District. Below is the most recent news update, copied from our website.
ON THE PUBLIC'S TAX DOLLAR
(And that is true whether they hold another election to tax all property owners, or get expected grants from the State Department of Water Resources. See below for more on that.)
Here is a chart of the top landowners and their overwhelming weight in this election:
This would all be bad enough if the 67 petitioners were all actually people. At least people could be viewed as having some concern for the health and future of this land and community.
BUT THEY ARE CORPORATE ENTITIES. And most are not even based here
You read that right. Corporations are voting in Butte County elections
The list of candidates for the TWD board is one index of this corruption of democracy. The graph below reveals that most are corporate employees, and that half of these individuals do not live in Butte County. Every single one of them represents firms among the top 50 landowners by assessed value.
Half of the candidates are members or directors of the Agricultural Groundwater Users of Butte County, the members-only growers' interest group formed in 2017 with the explicit goal of influencing, to their benefit, Butte County's compliance effort with the State's 2014 groundwater sustainability law.
The leaked document on the right spelled out the agenda even before AGUBC was formed:
Role of the State Department of Water Resources (DWR)
State water planners first dreamed of hooking up Butte County's rich west-side groundwater basins to state networks in 1978.
Our water was termed an "underperforming asset" by the technocrats and engineers whose job it has been, for over a century, to move water from areas in California that still have it, to those that have foolishly used up all theirs.
And what did the DWR propose to do, even in 1978?
1: Lower the water table about 100 feet (far enough to choke off all valley-oak ecosystems, creek ecosystems, and virtually all shallow wells) to create storage space for banked water. This is exactly what the Vina GSA proposed in its 2022 sustainability plan.
2: Develop infrastructure to pump in surplus surface water during wet years and "bank" it for groundwater pumpers. This is exactly what the TWD is intended to accomplish.
THE WITHDRAWALS WERE NOT INTENDED JUST FOR BUTTE COUNTY
The flow of the aquifer south and west was always well known. DWR intends our "underperforming asset," the groundwater that keeps Chico green and homesteads able to survive, to be sucked out of the ground by its clients in Glenn and Colusa Counties as well.
A few slides from our recent public forums illustrate the DWR's plans:
The Curious Journey of Paul Gosselin
Tuscan Water District was sold to local growers as a way to forestall the State of California coming in and gaining control of this area's groundwater.
But that is exactly what is happening - through the back door, by stealth.
This is a brief timeline of the career of Paul Gosselin, until 2021 the chief of Butte County's Department of Water Resources and Conservation. (You can view his bio at the State DWR here.)
1. Sets up Butte County's Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (2015-16)
2. Contacts and lobbies local growers to form the Tuscan Water District (2017-18)
3. Presides over creation of the Groundwater Sustainability Plans (2019-20)
4. Promoted to Deputy Director of Sustainable Groundwater Management at the State of California's Department of Water Resources (the same agency that identified our groundwater as an "underperforming asset" to the rest of the state in 1978.)
5. Approves the Groundwater Sustainability Plans for Butte County that he himself created (2022), even though the GSAs were promptly sued over the stated plans to (you guessed it) drop water tables 100 feet below historic averages.
6. Doles out millions in grants to the Groundwater Sustainability Agencies that he himself set up while at Butte County (2023)
And what's next? We suspect that if the Tuscan Water District gets established by this current election, he will supply it with sufficient grants from State taxpayers to:
–Pay back its debts to its private backers
–Give it a budget to do more than accrue debt and engage in PR
–Put off having the TWD ask the landowners for a property-tax assessment (which would require 2/3 approval, again by value of assessed land – a higher bar for passage).
And then what happens? Using State funds to build public infrastructure implies State access to our water, perhaps even before a single acre-feet of water has been delivered to our area through TWD's various infrastructure schemes.
All the DWR needs is a drought emergency declaration, and all bets are off.
So much for keeping the State of California out of our groundwater.
