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Editorial Opinion,
Rita C. Kidd
Chairperson, MERG Committee for the Preservation of Catheys Valley and Hornitos
August 16, 2006
The Board of Supervisors scheduled a presentation by the MERG Committee, for their meeting of Tuesday, July 25, 2006, to present their request for public hearing so that facts, public input and expert testimony could be brought before the Board. The MERG Committee was not prepared for what turned out to be an unnoticed pre-public hearing hearing. Following a brief presentation of background material supporting the value of a public hearing so that expert testimony could be presented on current and immediate public health, safety and welfare threats, the Board requested input from the audience. The meeting was allowed to last two hours, when we’d been told it would be limited to 30 to 60 minutes. During the meeting, the Board listened long and hard to opponents of a moratorium. Proponents came prepared to speak only briefly on the need for a public hearing…a public hearing to be adequately noticed and which we requested to be held in the evening to allow maximum public participation. We were not provided an opportunity to summarize our request or correct misinformation before Board consideration, although this was agendized as our issue, and we requested an opportunity to do so. Our request to make closing statements was denied.
A public hearing is defined as: a formal meeting held pursuant to public notice by the governing body or planning agency, intended to inform and obtain public comment, prior to taking action. The value of noticing a meeting in the evening hours to enable broad public debate and expert opinion was lost on this Board of Supervisors. The opinion of 500 people who signed this petition was discounted. If you were among the 200 or so from outside the boundaries of the proposed moratorium area your opinion didn’t hold much weight. If you were among the almost 300 people from within the boundaries, there were not enough of you for your opinion to count.
Supervisor Bibby, quoting one of the opponent’s statements, stated that the Board would be “abusing its powers” to enact a moratorium based on no more information than we’d presented about current and immediate public health, safety and welfare threats. Of interest, in Amador County, it was County staff and the Board that brought this issue to the public for open debate, before that county imposed a moratorium by resolution last fall.
If you were in the meeting on July 25, you saw more than 100 hungry mouths fearful of imposing a temporary moratorium so that orderly planning can ensue. Developers, real estate agents, builders and other construction trades have an insatiable appetite for newly divided lands. This appetite for developable properties is matched only by the appetite of local governments for what they believe to be new sources of revenue; the public health, safety and welfare facts, be damned; the cost of infrastructure to meet demands, be damned. As you’ve witnessed in other nearby counties, the preferred routine is develop parcels, build houses, update plans, then think infrastructure. It is so much easier to look at this situation from afar, and think, “What were they thinking!”
I don’t believe anyone even heard the fact presented that Mariposa County has an absence of surface water supplies over the greatest portion of the County. Other than a very limited supply of surface water to MPUD for the town of Mariposa, water from Mariposa’s only lakes and rivers is under management and ownership from outside this jurisdiction. Mariposa has no Mariposa County Water District that can promise a known and unlimited supply of water to new development.
Except for the town of Mariposa, residents are dependent upon groundwater that is carried in hard rock fissures or cracks. As described by the Department of Water Resources in Groundwater Facts Bulletin 1, as described by the Department of Water Resources in Groundwater Facts Bulletin 1, “Fractures may be large or small and may run up and down or sideways. They may be a few millimeters to hundreds of meters long, but most are less than a millimeter wide.”
A millimeter is approximately 1/25 of an inch.”…”You’ll find most fractures in the upper few hundred feet of rock. This is because the weight of the rock on top inhibits the development of deep fractures. In addition, the deeper you go, the smaller the width of these fractures.”
“The total amount of water in storage in the rocks surrounding a hard rock well is small, so that groundwater levels and the well's yield can decline dramatically during the summers of dry years.” Further this bulletin states ”Also, keep in mind that a neighboring well can interfere with your well. How much water passes through fractured rock varies greatly depending on connections between fractures. As a result, interference between neighboring wells is difficult or impossible to predict in advance. The best insurance against such problems is large lot sizes. A 3- to 5-acre lot will be adequate in most cases.”
It should be noted that Mariposa’s draft updated general plan will permit 2.5 acre parcels, while the Catheys Valley Community Plan draft limits residential to 5 acre minimums or greater if the land’s geography will require larger parcel sizes to support residential use. In twenty years of known water limitations Mariposa County has never conducted a groundwater study, therefore, the Planning Commission and Board don’t feel compelled to include these considerations in their planning decisions.
Neighboring counties are studying and documenting groundwater issues related to domestic wells drilled in hard rock areas, as well as on-site septic systems. Small community water systems in counties that are dependent upon groundwater have experienced water shortages. Individual domestic wells are demonstrating overdraft conditions. Some areas are using more groundwater from cracks and fissures in hard rock than is flowing back in. Some foothill counties have stated that groundwater supplies are an unreliable source of water to support population growth. An Eastern Fresno County groundwater study of water-short areas is recommending that Fresno County increase its minimum parcel size from 2 acres to ten acres and that it not permit a second residence unless the parcel is twenty acres or more. Other counties are concerned about the potential for contamination of groundwater supplies by on-site septic disposal systems.
Groundwater from hard rock fractures provides most of Mariposa County’s only supply of water. Local developers have stated that our water supply is unlimited in Mariposa. God must have blessed us differently than other foothill counties.
Enlightenment, meaning becoming informed and educated, and taking advantage of lessons learned is a time-honored means of human survival and advancement. Why do we in Mariposa County have to keep learning the hard way? Do we really need a rockslide to trigger the governance process?
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