OJAI : Company Opposes New Water Agency

An Ojai water company has asked state legislators to block the city’s attempt to form a ground-water management agency.

The Ventura River County Water District, which serves 5,000 customers, wants legislators to oppose the plan until Ojai Valley residents have more opportunity to review the agency’s proposed powers and fees.

District Manager Charles Curtis sent a three-page letter to Sacramento this week calling the plan “absolutely unacceptable” and “taxation without representation.”

Ojai has proposed joining with Casitas Municipal Water District, the Ojai Water Conservation District and Southern California Water Co. to regulate all water pumped or sold from underneath the city. The Legislature would have to approve the plan before the ground-water management agency could be formed.

The 6,000-acre water basin supplies 80% of the city’s water and serves about 200 ranchers. It has never been regulated, but officials say it has never been overdrawn.

Curtis said his board is not opposed to regulation, but the agency is being organized without public hearings.

Under the plan, all property owners in an estimated 9,000-acre area would pay annual fees of up to $7.50 per acre. Well users would pay additional pumping charges and fines if they break any rules.

Each agency member has agreed to appoint an official to sit on the agency’s governing board. A fifth director is to be chosen by several other small water companies.

Rancher Carl Huntsinger, who coordinated four months of weekly meetings with city and water officials to draft the plan, said it was reviewed at eight public meetings with little opposition.

“I don’t understand what this is all about,” Huntsinger said of the district’s concerns.

“I met with them last month and they were all for it,” he said.

Curtis said that the district never endorsed the plan and that Huntsinger “must have gotten the wrong impression.”