Rate Hike Brings Farmers Down

Actor, activist and citrus rancher Peter Strauss spoke out Tuesday against Casitas Municipal Water District’s 19 percent rate hike

By Daryl Kelley
Confronted by angry farmers who predicted a loss of the bucolic nature of the Ojai Valley, directors of the Casitas Municipal Water District imposed Tuesday a nearly 19 percent hike in the cost to irrigate crops on top of a 53 percent increase last year.
Farmers said the move could be the beginning of the end of Ojai Valley agriculture, a potentially fatal blow to the orchards that have encircled the valley’s towns for a century.
They predicted that small farmers will simply let their trees die and that larger farmers will drill their own wells, depleting the underground water basin on which thousands of valley residents depend, sparking fierce water wars among neighbors and water companies.
“I’m the third or fourth largest (Casitas) water user ,” said farmer Jim Finch. “And I am definitely looking for methods to get off. I’ve drilled one well, and I’m looking at three more.”
As farmers let their trees die, or switch to ground water, farmers predicted that Casitas’ income will plummet, since crops use nearly half of all the water the district sells from the huge Lake Casitas reservoir. So, the water district’s efforts to boost its budget so it can repair an aging infrastructure, will backfire, they said.
Board members emphathized, but adopted the new rates anyway.
They said they had no choice but to raise farmers’ rates again because of a state law that forces water districts to treat residents and farmers equally by charging them the cost of delivering their water.
“I don’t want to see the trees go; nobody does,” said Director Bill Hicks. “We’ve got to do this right … or we’re gong to screw up this whole thing. We got backed into this (by the law).”
Board President Jim Word promised to continue to work with farmers to try to relieve their burden.
Citing a water rate study commissioned after last year’s contentious hearings, the directors said they had done everything they could to keep the agricultural rate low, using $1.8 million in property taxes to offset part of the cost of delivering water to farmers.
Without that offset, farmers could have faced rates of more than $500 per acre-foot of water, instead of $371 they’ll now have to pay. That’s up from $208 last year and $312 before the new increase this week.
So, even though farm water rates have nearly doubled, things could have been worse, directors said.
“It’s going to be a lot less than it could have been,” said Director Richard Handley, before the unanimous board vote imposed the new rate.
But the farmers weren’t buying it.
They said the formula the district’s consultant used to determine equitable water rates was so complex it was impossible to analyze precisely to see if the new rates were justified.
And the farmers said the directors were going overboard in trying to meet the letter of Proposition 218, a 1996 voter initiative that state courts now say require equitable treatment of all water users. They said other water districts still give farmers a steep discount on rates, including four nearby in Santa Barbara County.
“Prop. 218 is a lot grayer than it was first presented,” Finch said.
There was even talk of a lawsuit if Casitas persists with its agricultural rate increases.
Tony Thacher, whose family has farmed this valley for generations, said Casitas’ new rates are destructive on many levels, and self-defeating.
“I’m of the opinion that you’re pricing yourselves out of the ag. water business,” Thacher wrote in a detailed letter to the board. “It will be a slow and painful process of declining use affecting those who can least afford to farm and have no other water recourse.”
And, in the end, as wells replace water from Lake Casitas, the water district’s budget will not only be unbalanced and orchards destroyed, the ground beneath residents’ feet will actually begin to sink for lack of subterranean water to hold it up, he said.
“This is the most chilling consequence ... of less CMWD water being used by irrigated agriculture,” he wrote. “This is the real danger to the Ojai Valley and our livelihood — a contentious and perhaps litigious situation that pits neighbor against neighbor as the water table sinks beneath our feet.”
Grower and restaurant owner DeWayne Boccali recounted the story of Casitas officials coming to him 36 years ago, pleading that he use water from the struggling dam enterprise.
“They told me to plant trees and buy water, and I did,” he said. “Now, after all these years, my property is (virtually) condemned by these water rates.”
Boccali said he already pays $11,000 a month to water his Upper Ojai crops.
And grower Mary Bergen said her bill has soared from $7,000 to $8,000 a month to to $12,000 to water 100 acres of avocados — a figure so daunting she doesn’t know if she can continue to farm.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’m fortunately having a good year. ... (but) last year was awful and next year is going to be awful.”
Jim Churchill, a leader in the movement of valley farmers away from oranges to Pixie tangerines, said his bill to water 17 acres has soared 187 percent in two years to $18,600 a year, and is still going up.
“Every thousand dollars I give you guys ... is a thousand dollars I don’t have in my pocket,” he said. “I’m here to say somewhat hopelessly ... continue talking and reverse this. We think you’re doing yourselves a disservice, as well as us.”
Peter Strauss, an actor who farms 30 acres of oranges, commented on the precarious nature of farming even without a rate increase. In the last three years, he said, he’s had expenses of $108,000 and income of $104,000 from his crops.
“In farming today, that’s a success,” he said.
Strauss emphasized the benefits to everyone of living in a farming valley, and its fragile nature.
“Let’s go up to Dennison Grade and stop at the top at the Ojai Valley Outlook,” he said, his voice rising. “We all know this view. We can see all the homes, and all the farms. This is a truly unique, extraordinary, beautiful com-munity. Shangri La, as they say. We need to ensure it survives.”
But if those trees die, and the land is left vacant, the day will come when the politics of development will overcome this valley, despite local laws to preserve farmland and open space, he said.
What we would have then, he said “is not Shangri-La, but Sherman Oaks.”
The interdependence of the Ojai Valley’s water supply systems has become an increasing issue during the last year, as the valley’s several water agencies have sharply hiked rates to maintain and rebuild aging pipes, pumps, tanks and reservoirs.
And every move by Casitas, the valley’s largest water agency, affects every other one, since it provides water to its neighbors.
In fact, the valley’s groundwater management agency has begun an extensive study of precisely how the Ojai Valley basin works and what effect new wells would have on it during dry years, when there is not enough rain to replenish it. But that study is just beginning, and will take two years to complete, officials said.
Casitas provides water for about 65,000 people and nearly 5,700 acres of farmland in the Ojai Valley and Ventura areas. About 200 farmers use about 44 percent of the district’s water.
And because most Casitas customers are residents, not farmers, and they fared well under the new rates, the board received just 75 letters of protest, far short of the 1,554 majority needed to block the new rates.
Most Ojai Valley customers, predominantly Oak View residents, got a sharp reduction in rates.
Higher rates are required for farms, and for customers in Ventura, not only to fund millions of dollars in maintenance projects and fully fund an emergency reserve account, but because the district is under pressure to follow state guidelines for equitable distribution of water costs.
Homeowners already pay the full cost of delivering their water. Historically, farmers have enjoyed a subsidized rate because the federally constructed Casitas Dam project was built partly to promote Ojai Valley agriculture.
Even with the farmers’ rate increased to $371 per acre foot, they still pay less than the $455 rate most residential customers pay. (An acre-foot of water meets the needs of two typical households for a year.)
Casitas officials have said they might be able to legally justify the lower rate because agricultural users do not need the high quality water delivered to their orchards since a sophisticated treatment plant was built a decade ago to meet state drinking-water standards.
If all costs, including treatment, were included, farmers would pay $521 an acre foot, analysts have said.
The new water rates differ from customer to customer, depending on the size of a customer’s water meter and how much water is used.
For example, according to district rate models, a resident with a typically sized water meter (5/8 to 1 inch), using 34 units of water (748 gallons per unit) every two months, would now pay $81.40, including a service charge of about $38. That’s about $9, or 10 percent, less than the resident had paid bi-monthly.
For farmers, water rates go up 18.9 percent regardless of the size of the farm, but proposed reductions in fixed service charges mean a smaller percentage increase in the overall water bill.
For example, a farmer with 40 irrigated acres pays $30,802 a year for water service, $4,341 or 16.4 percent more than before, according to the water district models. That assumes the farmer has a two-inch meter and uses two acre feet of water per acre per year.
A farmer with 200 irrigated acres would now pay about $152,628 for water service, $21,030 or 16 percent more. That assumes the farmer has a 4-inch meter and uses 2 acre feet per acre.
And if the same 200-acre farm had a 6-inch meter, the annual tab increases to $157,649, $13,035 or 9 percent more than before, according to the district.
Farmers have said the water district underestimated actual water use in its rate models.