Troy's Motivation for Running

By Troy B. Becker

The Ojai Water Disaster

Friday, September 28, 2012

Position:

• Roll-back rates for GSWC customers
• Protect our farmers and fixed-income seniors
• Create a Valley-wide water policy
• Act as a representative in Sacramento to protect our water, our rates, and our neighbors
• Manage our recreation area and provide benefits to district taxpayers

A successful Long-Term Bond Purchase can effectively cut our water rates in half. Any such purchase and Administration of Water Franchise Agreement must:
1. Be owned by the citizens of Ojai (the bond holders). Consider a Community Facilities District (CFD).
2. Whoever runs it must sign a document that allows the administration of our water franchise to be relinquished at defined periods of time (renewals at taxpayers request are allowed).
3. Must sign a document specifically protecting the static water levels in our water basin (for farmers).
4. Abide by the strictest interpretation of propositions and laws protecting rates and rate base.

Protect our Farmers and Fixed-Income Seniors The Meiners Oaks notice is exactly what our farmers fear and serves to only put a real-life drama onto their plight. In 2006, my own well at my home in Ojai drew down and could not sustain water levels for irrigation purposes. I was a bit in shock, as I had done quite a bit to conserve water and limit the use of my well. Theoretically, extending the time between the well uses allows the streams of water feeding the well to recharge. This is like filling a bucket with a low-pressure hose. But in my case and, as I soon realized, like our East-end farmers, the wells that are normally drawing water less than 250 ft. underground are not deep enough. The water table was either drawn down below any capacity to recharge or simply had little water flowing into the Valley to recharge.

Today there are reports of wells that may normally have water at levels as high as 20 ft. below ground seeing water levels drop to 100 ft. or more. Farmers, in the years following 2005, got nothing less than slammed: a. Many farmers generally supply their own well water, if they can; otherwise they must purchase water from Casitas. So if a farmer has a well HIGHER than a few hundred feet, what used to cost a few dollars for well water (generally a $200 meter fee) now costs over ten-thousand dollars per month. You don't have to be a genius to figure out that this essentially bankrupts a farmer in what can come down to only a few days of watering. Few farmers can withstand this kind of calamity, and none should have to. b. Ojai Valley is dependent on our farmers for our community's character. The Oxnard basin used to be covered with the type of tree crops seen in the Ojai Valley. These high-investment crops are difficult to nurture, always under attack, and need plenty of water just to live through what is often 5 to 6 years of investment before a fruit can be picked, and then it takes years before the word "profit" is whispered. Did I mention the occasional freeze that can destroy every tree? Every penny counts. Is it any wonder the Oxnard Plains have all but been scrapped of what used to be our county's staple crops of lemons, avocados, and oranges? Now take those large fields of tree crops and condense them down to the Ojai Valley's comparatively small-crop land basin and throw a few water bills adding up to ten and fifteen thousand dollars a month. c. Coupled with the drought and "Water Drawn Down" of 2006, Casitas faced a rate dilemma. Casitas was required to make certain rates are appropriate to all ratepayers. The issue was difficult for everyone to swallow but essentially the farmers were saddled with a significant increase in what were already high rates. No one felt good about this--no one.

Create a Valley-Wide Water Policy While everyone seems to know that conserving water is very important, there is no public consensus as to what the status is of our water level is. I don't understand this. Essentially, we have no Valley-wide water policy. I contend that without this kind of policy everyone protects their own, and when a real water emergency strikes, we will find people are making decisions for us that no one feels good about. If you think this can't happen, you have not taken a drive through the Central coast in the past few months. In that case the courts came in and simply told an entire group of farmers, "You're out, and you have no claim to the available water." It was simple as that. Ask yourself the question: "How much water do we have, and exactly where are we when it comes to the glass being empty or full?" What everyone should know, and what the Meiners Oaks Phase I emergency spells out, is that we have one glass of water in the valley, and the lake level is not always a good measurement of availability. If any one of our several water purveyors' wells are low, the purveyor has to purchase water from Casitas, thereby increasing their own costs and customers' costs and drawing the lake down more rapidly. This is true throughout the valley. We must acknowledge that we only have one glass of water. All purveyors must be protected, and we must have a Valley-wide communication policy on the status of our lake, our wells, and our pPurveyors. How empty is our glass, and what we must we all do to keep it full? There can be no more single purveyor emergencies. We must have Valley-wide emergencies.

Must must communicate, and we must provide information, even paid information in our local papers, online, etc., telling all our neighbors what the status is and how much water we have. Exactly what is each of us required to do if we have another dust bowl? More importantly, are we in the middle of one now?

Manage our Recreation Area and Provide Benefits to District Taxpayers Do you know that if you are a property owner in any of our Casitas 5 Districts, every year on your property tax bill you pay a recreation fee that supports the lake? And over the past fifty years, you have also paid a fee to pay for the dam and infrastructure that created the lake. How much benefit are you deriving over non-tax- paying people for the use of our lake? After all, you paid for it; shouldn't you receive a little discount over users who did not pay for it? Do you have any idea how much the recreational activities contribute to the lake, to the overall costs and/or revenues of the lake? How is the recreational area doing? Does our investment in the recreational area pay off? What are we doing to improve the recreational facilities and increase patrons' and local patrons' use of the lake? If we can make the lake a recreational success story, does it play a role in keeping our water rates low? There is a director who for 8 years vowed to restore the integrity of Lake Casitas. Just what does that mean? Have we been ripped of up until now? If so, why don't we know this? Consider these issues when you vote!

Act as a Representative in Sacramento to Protecting our Water, our Rates and our Neighbors Our politicians write letters using the words "disappointed" and "dismayed." What? I am more than disappointed and dismayed. We are talking about something we have no choice on here. My plants died two years ago. Seniors literally are choosing to not take baths and clean dishes because they simply have no money to pay for their water. Haven't you heard the term "fixed income"? I am a citizen. I do not elect people to sit on a board in my District to collect a fee for every meeting they attend and draw a very nice health benefit package to tell me, after over two years, that we need to complete a study on this. (And by the way, if they didn't know about this ten years ago, they don't deserve to sit on these boards.)

Give me a break. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know this is a boon for Casitas. I'm a businessman: if someone walks into my shop and says, "Hey, let me give you a book of business and administrative revenues, worth several million dollars. And by the way, we'll pay for the book of business ourselves, and we'll float you a few million dollars to make repairs and make certain all the infrastructure is A-OK. In fact, why don't you just let us know what it will take? We'll take care of it for you. And we will make sure there are a few dollars in there for a few things we didn't think of." Do you really think I need another study? Any water purveyor in a radius of 200 miles would jump at getting this "book of business." And don't think they aren't lining up just to do that.

But here's the real disappointment. Who should be the one leading this charge? Casitas for one, although that horse left the gates three years ago. How about the city of Ojai? The city is more involved with this problem than anyone in the Valley as the City originally sold the water Franchise to Golden State. Don't you think the one entity that continually has to say no to almost every notable charity or department that needs just a few dollars to stay afloat would be leading the charge to take their water back? Well no. They didn't even respond to the invitation. In fact, they had to be cajoled to get someone over to the FLOW meeting to figure out what was happening. That was less than a year ago.

Our representatives are not representing us. They are representing their self-interests as they are paid to sit on these boards. Their attitude is "This is not my problem until there is something in it for me." They certainly don't want to "rock the boat" as they may risk disenfranchising their big contributors. This is exactly what we don't want from our elected officials.

The simple fact is we are one Ojai Valley and we need to take care of our neighbors in need. The "us or them" attitude must stop. We elect people because we believe they will get be effective leaders and protect us from exactly what is happening here in the Ojai Valley. And let's not forget Ventura and the Rincon. These are our neighbors. When any of these neighbors is in trouble, we have the responsibility to help them in any way we can. It is our duty.

We must be active in Sacramento to protect our water, our rates, and our neighbors.

Elect leaders that don't need the job. Elect leaders who care about what is going on in our community, leaders who assume a leadership role when we are in need.