Supes get a grip on water law

The Butte County Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance Tuesday that they hope will keep Butte County’s groundwater, perhaps its most valuable resource and one that it going up in worth dramatically, under local control and out of the hands of SoCal water contractors. Whether the ordinance was necessary is still an open question.

After all, the county has been working for years to come up with a comprehensive water plan that would be based on sound science, take all factors into consideration, and have voluminous public participation.

The ordinance the board passed Tuesday is not that comprehensive plan. Instead, it is an attempt to address legal concerns brought up by the county’s lawyers about the remote possibility that state water law could trump the county’s local codes restricting the transfer of groundwater. The “real” plan won’t come out until June 2004.

Water Commission Chairman Mark Kimmelshue called Tuesday’s vote a “stop-gap measure” designed to ward off any lurking legal challenges that may arise between now and the moment the comprehensive water plan comes out. Although Kimmelshue expressed support for the ordinance Tuesday, the commission he chairs was apparently not so happy with it, at least not when the matter initially came up on Feb. 4. Believing that the ordinance would confuse people, Kimmelshue supported a motion at that meeting that called the ordinance “detrimental” and proposed to shelve it. That motion was narrowly defeated.

According to several sources, the idea that state law could overpower locals in water disputes originally was brought up by Sacramento attorney David R. E. Aladjem in a presentation given to a gathering of Northern California attorneys. But when contacted for comment, a somewhat bemused Aladjem said he was aware of the interest his presentation had attracted but could not comment on Butte County’s water situation without knowing all the details.

“The question of whether state law will pre-empt a local law is extremely difficult and depends upon the specific provision of the ordinance, the state law in question, the condition of the groundwater basin and the action that is proposed,” Aladjem said. “Without knowing all the factors, you can’t tell whether state law or local law controls.”

In the course of the board’s conversation about the new ordinance, Supervisor Mary Anne Houx brought up a concern that a current board member might have a conflict of interest when it comes to voting on water issues. Houx declined to name that supervisor, but it is fairly safe to say that she was referring to 4th District Supervisor Curt Josiassen, whose family owns a sizable rice farming operation and thus could profit from the sale of groundwater. County lawyer Bruce Alpert said he would look into the matter.