Deviating from the recommendation of the Los Osos Basin Management Committee, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors approved increasing the 2026 growth rate cap for the coastal town from 0 percent to 0.4 percent.
“Keeping the growth rate at 0.4 percent … is more than protective of the groundwater, couple that with the 2:1 offset that’s required, and we have a solid,” 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson said at the Dec. 16 meeting.
The supervisors’ greenlit proposed amendment to the growth management ordinance also removes annual growth caps countywide except in Los Osos, since only 11 percent of the allowed housing growth was used countywide.
Although the local coastal program caps Los Osos’ growth rate at 1 percent, supervisors chose a lower threshold to be more “conservative.”
Los Osos already has a 0.4 percent growth rate—a maximum allocation of 25 new dwelling units—after the supervisors adopted that rate for 2025.
While the town broke free from its 35-year-long building moratorium in 2024, the Board of Supervisors wanted landowners to pay for the local habitat they’re about to disturb.
According to county Long-Range Planning Division Manager Corey Hahn, the county hasn’t approved any new building permits for Los Osos since that adoption because applicants must go through a use permit process and accrue credits through the local habitat conservation program.
The 0.4 percent growth rate approval for next year is based on the recommendation of county Director of Groundwater Sustainability Blaine Reely. But three water purveyors—S&T Mutual Water Company, Golden State Water Company, and Los Osos Community Services District—opposed the recommendation in a joint letter to the supervisors.
They supported the Los Osos Basin Management Committee’s 0 percent growth rate recommendation based on a newly developed transient groundwater model and the deteriorating conditions in the local groundwater basin observed through the committee’s annual monitoring.
“The sustainability director asserts that because there is inherent uncertainty in the transient model, it should not be relied upon to predict impacts of growth and that a 0.4 percent growth rate can be recommended as it falls within the model’s uncertainty range,” the letter said. “Said another way, uncertainty isn’t a green light; it’s a warning sign.”
Los Osos Sustainability Group Chair Patrick McGibney also questioned the county’s stance.
“Since this basin was adjudicated in 2015, the steady state model has been used in its management. It was recognized in the basin’s annual reports to be a flawed model, but in 2023 showed the basin was ‘trending’ toward sustainability,” McGibney wrote in a letter to supervisors. “The county hailed the new transient model as a vast improvement over the steady state model and was hoping it would show the Los Osos Water Basin to have been sustainably pumped and able to support new growth. However, the new model showed the opposite, and now the county Planning Department (Blaine Reely) is questioning its reliability.”
The growth rate cap is expected to rise to 0.8 percent in 2027. ∆
This article appears in Dec 25, 2025 – Jan 1, 2026.
Cambria needs to do the same. End the moratorium and build out the town.