LAKE COUNTY — Water issues in the county will be the focus of a meeting Friday from 9:30 a.m. to noon at the Board of Supervisors chambers at the Lake County Courthouse in Lakeport.
The meeting is being organized by Cobb area water district manager Robert Stark. Water district managers, county administrators and the public are invited to the meeting. The goal is to spark collaboration and discussion among the key players in water-related issues in the county.
With population growth in Lake County on the rise, there is the obvious need for the 88 licensed water agencies in the county to inform one another about the future of Lake County”s water supply and the various challenges they face, according to Stark. A big plus, he said, would be to get administrators in the county to share knowledge with water managers and operators who are busy working in the field.
One of the goals of the collaboration, Stark said, is for agencies to talk about tapping into the state”s integrated water management plan that allocated $25 million to the north coast. “To apply for a grant, you have to show that your agencies have agreed upon goals… One goal, in my opinion, would be to complete a county-wide water management study to graph and chart the aquifers so we know what kind of sustainable water sources we have,” Stark said.
He said he didn”t know whether the county has conducted a study of Lake County”s water supply. “Maybe we have, but I wouldn”t know because no one”s told me. That”s the intent of this meeting?if you do know it, then we should be sharing it with each other.”
At the last Lake County”s Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) water summit, water managers were invited but weren”t asked to share their knowledge about water issues, Stark said. “LAFCO spoke, and other agencies spoke?but after that they just said, ?thanks for attending” and all the water managers looked around and said, ?what are we here for? We didn”t learn anything.””
One example of information that needs to be shared between water managers and county administrators, Stark said, are water table levels and the levels of two common minerals in Lake County?iron and manganese.
“If Dunken Pumps (one water district in the county) are seeing water tables dropping out in the valley, or if they have high iron levels, we should all know about it. In Cobb, when the water wells are low, the iron and manganese levels were acceptable. When the wells are full, that”s when we have the problem. You”d think it would be the other way around, but it”s not. We can exchange this kind of information.”
John Benoit, executive officer of LAFCO, said he will be attending the meeting. “I”m very interested in the meeting. I think it would be valuable, so that water districts can work together, with more collaboration.”
He said LAFCO is in charge of probable growth boundaries for the districts. When new developments get their sustainable water supply report reviewed by the county, then LAFCO reviews it. He said there is no data on ground water levels or county-wide studies on aquifers. “We don”t have any data, except in Big Valley. To this date that isn”t available. The law says developers have to do a report of sustainable water supply, but we don”t have that requirement. We aren”t a bunch of hydrologists that do that analysis,” Benoit said.
Contact Elizabeth Wilson at ewilson@record-bee.com.
