Five years after it was “sidelined” from discussions about the future of the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin, the Estrella-El Pomar-Creston (EPC) Water District is taking a second crack at joining the committee that’s implementing the policies and projects to balance the basin.
On Feb. 8, the EPC Water District’s board of directors sent a formal letter to the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors asking it to transfer a portion of its basin representative duties to the district—which would allow the EPC to take a seat on the Paso Basin Cooperative Committee.
“We want to be able to sit there,” EPC Water District President Dana Merrill told New Times. “I don’t see why we should have any less of an opportunity.”
Established in 2017, the EPC district has 199 landowner members, mostly on the west side of the sprawling basin. It formed some months after the Shandon-San Juan Water District, which represents about 70 landowners on the basin’s east side.
Because the Shandon district formed ahead of a 2017 state deadline, it was able to join the Paso Basin Cooperative Committee and have a vote in the state-mandated groundwater sustainability planning process. The EPC district, though, missed that deadline and needed the county’s approval to join.
County supervisors denied that request in 2018, citing concerns about giving commercial agriculture too much influence on the committee. Merrill said he’s hopeful that a newly constituted Board of Supervisors majority will be more receptive to their pitch.
“We hope the new board will be supportive,” Merrill said. “They’re missing a major component. We represent 35 percent of the pumping and 44 percent of the wells in the basin. We’re a significant player and we believe that agriculture is underrepresented on that [committee]. There’s no question about it. And I don’t think that it is logical.”
If the county were to approve the EPC’s request, it would create a fifth seat on the committee tasked with balancing the basin, alongside SLO County, the Shandon-San Juan Water District, the city of Paso Robles, and the San Miguel CSD.
Debate over Paso Robles basin management has been fierce in recent years, with critics of the water districts calling their leaders “pirates” with sinister motives to bank and sell water out of the basin.
Supervisors John Peschong and Debbie Arnold, who represent the 1st and 5th Districts, respectively, alluded to those theories in 2018 when they denied the EPC district a seat on the committee.
“I think it’s disproportionate,” Peschong said then about allowing two water districts on the committee. “That is what I think is the scariest part about this.”
Merrill, who owns Mesa Vineyard Management in Templeton, called the water banking allegations “a bunch of bullshit” not grounded in reality.
“I’m disappointed with all the acrimony we have to have,” he said. “Somehow, we have to roll up our sleeves and work together to find a solution.”
In Merrill’s letter to the Board of Supervisors, he argued that the EPC district has made important contributions of its own accord to the basin sustainability process—adding more than two dozen wells to the basin’s monitoring network, commissioning feasibility studies about basin recharge and supplemental water projects, and creating a 3D model of the basin, among other items.
“We’re not a bunch of hayseeds,” he told New Times. “You’ve got very technical people. You have people who run wineries, vineyards, farm other crops, who can make some serious contributions if you don’t just push them away.”
While the county has not officially responded to the EPC’s letter, SLO County 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson said that he’s “looking forward to getting [the EPC’s request] on the agenda in the next month or two.”
Gibson recently took over for Arnold as the county’s representative on the Paso Basin Cooperative Committee. Long critical of Arnold’s and Peschong’s leadership over the basin, Gibson dissented in the 2018 vote to block the EPC district from joining the committee.
In his reelection campaign last year, Gibson promised a course change on Paso basin governance, and took in donations from members of both water districts.
“First, I’d like to be sure there’s discussion of their request with the other stakeholders in the Paso basin,” Gibson told New Times. “Pending those conversations, we’ll get it to the Board of Supervisors for consideration.” Δ
This article appears in Weddings 2023.