County Supervisors set hearing for countywide groundwater program
Board will look at Paso Robles, Nipomo areas
– The latest action by the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors on the current groundwater crisis was to set a hearing date of Oct. 27 for amendments to Title 8 of the Health and Sanitation Ordinance and Title 19 of the Building and Construction Ordinance in order to implement the county’s proposed water conservation program.
The program would require that new water use be offset at a ratio of 1:1. It also addresses well permits and the regulation of wasteful use of water. This hearing also includes establishing new fees associated with the implementation of the offset requirements. The proposed program would affect water use in both new and existing development in urban and rural land uses in the unincorporated areas of the county.
“You have regulation of wasteful use of water,” Templeton resident Bill Pelfrey said during public comment at Tuesday’s meeting. “Now what you call ‘wasteful use of water,’ some of us may call ‘quality of life.’ You can’t conserve your way out of this. It’s a drought. You must accept it as a drought. Do water storage so it doesn’t happen again, because that is the only thing that can be done. Because all the places you can get water are also having water problems. So it’s storage that’s needed, not more regulation, not conservation. … Set a precedence and actually do something.”
The supervisors also set a hearing for Nov. 10 to establish Zone 19 of the county’s Flood Control and Water Conservation District. For this hearing, staff requested direction in regards to noticing the public hearing on establishing the zone and noticing for the public hearing on a resolution proposing adoption of the Paso Robles Parcel Tax.
“I think you should publicize more than you are, because this is a major change to people’s lives and how they live,” said Gary Kirkland of Atascadero.
Earlier this year, the board of supervisors approved the adoption of a program that continued elements of the urgency ordinance that expired in August.
The ordinance stipulated that:
- New agricultural development must be water-neutral: the plantings must be offset by an equal amount of conservation, one for one.
- No new vested rights: in the urgency ordinance, hundreds of new plantings were exempted from the ordinance under a vested rights process that provided that if agriculturists could prove they had made significant investments in new plantings, they could be planted anyway.
- Sunset upon adoption of a groundwater sustainability plan: the ordinance will expire when a groundwater sustainability plan is adopted, which is required to be in place by 2020.
- It only applies to the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin.
Because the items were placed on the consent agenda, which is reserved for items staff believes to not be controversial, some questions were raised from the public about the first reading being approved without a public hearing. County staff said that the items were appropriately placed because they pertained to setting a hearing date, not approving the items.
To view past supervisor meetings or to view agendas, go to the county’s website.
