Will Dunbar is Halcyon’s go-to guy when the water stops flowing.
The 70-year-old has managed the small community’s water system for years and has a point person on speed dial to fix every leak.
“I’ve got a 24/7 person that I end up calling at 3 o’clock in the morning when we got a broken pipe and the water’s gushing out and nobody has any water,” he said. “It’s been a big responsibility for the town to maintain the water system. It’s involved a lot of expense, a lot of man-hours, and a lot of bureaucratic back-and-forth with the regulatory systems.”
That back-and-forth is now spelling some respite for Dunbar.
Founded as a theosophical intentional community in 1903, Halcyon has always had its own water system.
But periodic water testing over the years found that the Halcyon Water Company system wasn’t always compliant with the state’s drinking water standards, though Dunbar noted that the fluctuations were minor.
The California State Water Resources Control Board stepped in to help, awarding a $9 million grant in 2025 to the neighboring Oceano Community Services District (CSD) to bring Halcyon under its wing.
For the first time since the community’s inception, Halcyon will be integrated with the Oceano CSD’s water system, with construction set to begin in 2027. The project brings a monumental upgrade that has some residents contemplating the break from the past, others anxious about increasing water bills, and community members like Dunbar grateful for a future with safer drinking water.
“In a lot of ways, it’s going to be a relief that we don’t have to be the ones responsible to provide water to everyone,” he said. “It’s always exciting when you have a big construction project going on. I think the biggest reaction will be when they get their first water bill from Oceano.”
Trickling in
The origins of the Halcyon Water Company can be traced back to a single well drilled by the Temple of the People on a hillside. The groundwater well served residents of the Open Gate guest house and a cottage.
Beside that well, a windmill and storage tanks elevated on a platform helped deliver water through a gravity system. Later, a gasoline engine powered the pump.
During the 1960s, the water system modernized. Two bright blue 5,000-gallon storage tanks, a chemical dosing system, and a self-cleaning metallic cartridge filter system joined the central well.
Now, 40 Halcyon households pay a flat fee every month to receive water from the Halcyon Water Company. One of them is longtime tenant Eva Ulz.
Ulz and her partner rent a Temple-owned home. Their rental agreement includes a subscription to Halcyon water.
“We receive water that is pumped up from the Temple’s well, and it comes into our home and to our yard where we can use it for washing dishes and chores, and then we also use it for irrigating our garden,” she said. “But because it’s not currently meeting the state standards for drinking water, we get our drinking water from the town’s RO [reverse osmosis] system.”
For Ulz, a Temple member and its in-house general counsel, filling water jugs from the town’s RO system that’s under lock-and-key is now a regular part of Halcyon living.
Every two weeks, she brings four 3-gallon jugs to the pump house and takes around 10 minutes to fill them with RO water.
“I feel very much in touch with my ancestors when I am hauling water home to my house,” Ulz said with a laugh. “We use it for drinking, for cooking, … I don’t only wash my hair in RO water, but I like to give it a good cleanse for the RO water. The temple water can be hard on pipes. It’s hard on appliances. Our toilets get deposits in them that we have to scrub off, and it can be hard on clothing, skin, and hair as well.”
County and state officials found that Halcyon’s water has exceeded the state’s primary maximum contaminant level (MCL) multiple times for selenium and nitrate and the secondary MCL for manganese.
According to the National Library of Medicine, ingesting high doses of manganese in drinking water could hamper intellectual function in children. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added that nitrate and selenium contamination in well water could cause “blue baby syndrome,” and chronic liver, kidney, and intestinal damage, respectively.
California has at least 25 MCLs for water that are more stringent than federal standards, according to the state water board. The Halcyon Water Company system caught the water board’s eye in 2021 when the San Luis Obispo County Environmental Health Services Department issued a noncompliance order for failing to maintain the monitoring program and for exceeding the maximum levels for selenium and nitrate.
The 2023 Halcyon Water System Improvement Feasibility Study noted that selenium concentrations have regularly surpassed the contaminant limit over the past decade.
“The concentration for nitrate has exceeded MCL levels multiple times since 2016, and concentrations of manganese 42 times higher than the secondary MCL have been measured within the HWC system,” the study said.
Sacramento-based nonprofit Rural Community Assistance Corporation stepped in to help bring the Halcyon Water Company up to code. It oversaw the feasibility study to find ways to solve the town’s water quality issues.
Ultimately, the Halcyon Water Company secured funding from the state water board to access a more reliable source of water for its customers.
The money came from SAFER—Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience—which provides up to $130 million a year for the state water board to develop and carry out sustainable solutions for disadvantaged communities struggling with drinking water problems.
The $9 million slice of that funding the Oceano OCSD received last year will enable the agency to install individual meters in Halcyon and set up master meters at nearby mobile home parks—Ken Mar Gardens, Halcyon Estates, and Grande Mobile Manor—in a similar water contamination dilemma. Ken Mar Gardens declined to speak with New Times.
Construction is scheduled to begin next year and will involve digging up Halcyon one street at a time for the connection. Until the project is complete, it’s still on the Halcyon Water Company to provide water for the town.
Going with the flow
Ulz and fellow Halcyon Water Company customers pay $50 a month to receive unlimited water. When the town connects to the Oceano CSD, Halcyon residents will have to be more mindful of their use.
Under the Oceano CSD’s 2026 bimonthly rates, a single-family residence is billed at a base rate of $91. The first six units of water cost $5 per unit, and anything above six units are billed at $9.75.
By fiscal year 2029-30, a single-family residence’s base rate is projected to be $116, while a multi-family household could be charged a minimum $93 every two months.
While she’s bracing for higher water bills, Ulz told New Times she’s glad to see the state take water access seriously.
“When water resources are not available, communities die,” she said. “I think any frustration you might be hearing … is more along the lines that this has become our [only] viable option, without the opportunity to continue exploring the other options that were on the table previously.”
‘It’s more than just the practicality of being able to have safe drinking water. It’s also our interaction with the land on which we live and the way that that connects to our spirituality. That’s important in this conversation.’
—Eva Ulz, Halcyon resident
One option several community members had been interested in was the possibility of upgrading the existing Halcyon Water Company equipment to filter contaminants.
But the state water board found that consolidating with a larger water system was the “gold standard” sustainable solution in the long run.
“We know that small water systems like Halcyon fail more often, and they fail for longer. When I say, ‘fail,’ I mean they deliver unsafe water,” SAFER Section Supervising Engineer Chad Fischer said.
The current regulatory limits for manganese and selenium are 50 parts per billion each, while the limit for nitrate is 10 parts per million.
Fischer added that installing treatments to remove those elements from Halcyon water would be costly. Expenses to run and maintain those treatments could compound, meaning Halcyon’s water bills could soar to above $200 a month.
A larger water system like Oceano CSD’s also has more manpower.
“It just has more staff and resources to ensure they can be proactive about compliance, not even reactive,” Fischer said. “Smaller systems have a much rougher time, and it’s no blame on those communities. … It’s just not a fair game.”
There are around 200 consolidation projects underway in the state, according to Fischer. Other areas in SLO County are familiar with the process.
A SAFER grant is helping Higuera Apartments in an unincorporated part of the county hook up to the city of SLO’s water system. That funding program also allowed North County’s Santa Lucia School to connect with Templeton CSD.
Over the past seven years, another 200 consolidation projects have also been completed across California. Fischer said it’s likely that smaller communities may feel a sense of loss in terms of autonomy and even identity when those integrations take shape.
“The state water board takes that seriously,” he said. “But I think a lot of times, it ends up with education and just reality that a consolidation solution really is a forever solution weighed against a much more expensive and less sustainable solution.”
Halcyon is no different. The selection of the Temple land—and its water—were intentionally done by its founders, according to resident Ulz.
“It’s more than just the practicality of being able to have safe drinking water,” she said. “It’s also our interaction with the land on which we live and the way that that connects to our spirituality. That’s important in this conversation.”
While Oceano CSD received the SAFER money last year, the district approved the $9 million budget adjustment in September 2026. Oceano CSD will cover the consolidation project costs using its water fund and get reimbursed by the state grant.
“Halcyon’s been on wells for 50 years, and they’re finally going to get upgraded,” Oceano CSD board member Shirley Gibson said at the meeting.
Rick London, the Temple of the People’s guardian-in-chief, has been privy to discussions with the Oceano CSD, the state water board, and the Rural Community Assistance Corporation for a few years.
As Halcyon’s de facto mayor of sorts, he understood that not complying with the state standards for drinking water could lead to daily fines for the water company. Like Ulz, London also realizes that the water system consolidation is a marked shift from the town’s roots.
“Mother Nature is having a hard time right now, and we have all these hacks, as I call them, ways of mitigating the damage we do to Mother Nature, so we can continue to survive,” he said. “When I was a kid, I could just drink from the hose. I would go hiking and I would drink from the streams. I’m sad about that.”
Still, the state water board allowed the community to retain an emblem of its past. Halcyon Water Company manager Dunbar is pleased that the state water board is letting the community hold on to its 123-year-old well.
“Generally, what the state does is, when they come in, they destroy your well, which is kind of cray-cray,” he said. “Through their kindness, we’ll be able to keep our well. … Perhaps some people can use it for irrigation, but basically, it’ll be in stasis until we figure out what we want to do.”
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
