CAN CRYSTAL GEYSER BE FINED FOR WATER THEFT?? California drought puts spotlight on water theft By Matt Weiser mweiser@sacbee Published: Sunday, Mar. 23, 2014 - 12:00 am It’s amazingly easy to steal water from a California stream. Even in this epic drought, the state has no way of monitoring exactly who is tapping into its freshwater supplies and how much they take. And those who do get caught taking water they have no right to often are allowed to keep taking it for years just by promising to obtain a permit. Nearly 30,000 entities in the state hold valid water diversion permits, including individual property owners, farmers and water utilities. Some have meters or gauges to measure their diversions, but the state has no ability of its own to monitor those gauges in real-time. People and entities with water rights are required to regularly report their water use to the state, but many don’t, and the state has no way of knowing if their accounts – self-reported – are truthful. In average water years, many of these issues don’t matter much. But the weaknesses are expected to complicate matters this year as the state struggles to stretch limited water supplies during the worst drought in 40 years. This spring, it is likely the State Water Resources Control Board will order some water rights holders to divert less water to ensure enough flow for cities and wildlife, something that has not been done since the drought of 1976-77. The state’s ability to enforce such curtailment orders will be sorely tested. Water board officials acknowledge the weaknesses, and say they will do their best within existing legal constraints to police the system. “We know for sure, unless we get another 40 days and nights of rain, that there are going to have to be curtailments,” said Andy Sawyer, assistant chief counsel at the water board, the state agency charged with regulating California’s complicated system of water rights. “The basic idea is to live within our available water supply ... so we don’t have people stealing from each other. “And frankly, under existing conditions, for a lot of people it’s just cheaper to violate and pay the penalty than it is to comply.” A basic principal of California water is that all the fresh water in the state’s lakes and streams belongs to the public at large. It’s possible to get a state permit to use that water for a domestic or commercial purpose. But the permit usually comes with limits on the amount of water that may be diverted. Water permits or rights are held by all kinds of Californians: the rural homeowner who wants to fill a pond from an adjacent creek; the city that needs to tap a river to serve a growing population; the farmer who diverts water to grow wine grapes. But they generally fall into two classes. Any permit issued after 1914 is considered a “junior” water right and comes with stricter limits on how much water may be diverted and when. Violate those terms, and you’re stealing from somebody else: a city or farm downstream, or the fish and other creatures that need water to survive. These are the first class of water permits to face curtailments in a drought. The “senior” class of water rights are known as “riparian” and “pre-1914”. They generally include more supply and fewer diversion limits, if any. The state has no legal authority to impose fees on these diverters, and its ability to inspect their diversions is limited. But even these senior diverters are banned from “waste or unreasonable use” of water, and they could face curtailments this year due to the severity of the drought. Having a water right means you don’t have to buy water from somebody else. Instead, the water is free and you control access. Junior water rights usually include a nominal annual fee paid to the state, but otherwise the same easy access applies. This differs from homeowners or water contractors who pay a monthly fee that varies according to how much water they consume – and who, if they don’t pay, see their water cut off. Take the American River as an example. The city of Sacramento holds pre-1914 water rights in the American River, with few strings attached. Yet in recent years it has begun to adopt conservation rules because environmental groups contend that heavy water consumption by residents could be prosecuted as “waste” under state law, potentially jeopardizing the city’s water rights. Even in this drought year, no one has told the city to reduce its diversions, but it has tightened conservation rules as a gesture of cooperation with its neighbor cities. The city of Roseville, on the other hand, has no water rights in the American River. But it buys American River water from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which has a post-1914 right to water that it stores in Folsom Reservoir. If Reclamation doesn’t have enough water to fulfill its contract, it can cut back Roseville’s supply, which it intends to do this year. Put all this together in a state of 38 million people and there isn’t much water left to hand out. In a drought year like this one, all those water rights get stretched even thinner, and the temptation to cheat grows. ‘Slaps on the wrist’
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 15:08:14 +0000
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