Re: Letter of report water use for well owners

Outrageous!!!!!! I also just got my letter and reading through the maze of instructions alone, before even getting to the actual forms is overwhelming and I can handle tax returns. There are several shortcuts as I understand it- an online calculator to determine household (domestic use), or one can submit number of people in your household and use a pre-determined average (given). If your well was built before 1965, you may not be able to get a completed well report and can make a statement to that effect. Perhaps there should be a class to go through the procedure. I also think the penalties are VERY harsh punishment for not complying , whether able to or not, considering how much water is used domestically compared to vineyards AND 20 NEW VINEYARDS WERE JUST APPROVED? This has gotten WAY out of control. WINE IS NOT A NECESSITY!!! WATER TO DRINK, CLEAN AND BATHE IS!!!!!!!!!!!! Last year my water table dropped 12 feet and I have been extreme at conserving water. What will happen this year?

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Posted in reply to the post by lili22:

Outrageous!!!!!! I also just got my letter ...

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My appreciations to Lilli for this report. Others in the 4 Russian River tributaries, which these letters focus on, have also received such letters. Meanwhile the County is still permitting yet more vineyards in this area and elsewhere. Our coast is particularly at risk. 12 redwood trees were recently cut in my West County neighborhood to convert into a vineyard. If you have thoughts and feelings on this, one way to express them would be by letters to editors and online comments in response to articles. Following are email addresses where you can dispatch such letters.

Press Democrat – [email protected]
Sonoma County Gazette – [email protected]
Sonoma West Times – krista@sonomawest.com
North Bay Business Journal – [email protected]
The Bohemian – [email protected]
Russian River Times – [email protected]

Following is link to the cover of this week’s Bohemian and the first few paragraphs.

It is the longest article that I have seen in the Bohemian during my 24 years here. It relates directly to the letters people have been getting from the State Water Resources Control Board. Please consider writing a letter to letters@bohemian or making an online comment to bohemian.com, thus keeping this important story in the news.

https://www.bohemian.com/northbay/co...nt?oid=2741537

Coho vs. Pinot
On the Russian River, grape growing and fish don't mix
BY WILL PARRISH

In July, roughly 1,000 rural Sonoma County residents overflowed classrooms and small meeting chambers at five informational sessions convened by the State Water Resources Control Board. It would be hard to exaggerate many attendees' outrage. At one meeting, two men got in a fistfight over whether to be "respectful" to the state and federal officials on hand.

The immediate source of their frustration is a drought-related "emergency order" in portions of four Russian River tributaries: Mill Creek, Mark West Creek, Green Valley Creek and Dutch Bill Creek. Its stated aim is to protect endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead trout. Among other things, the 270-day regulation forbids the watering of lawns. It places limits on car washing and watering residential gardens. It does not, however, restrict water use of the main contemporary cause of these watersheds' decline: the wine industry.

"The State Water Resources Control Board is regulating lawns? I challenge you to find ornamental lawns in the Dutch Bill, Green Valley and Atascadero Creek watersheds," said Occidental resident Ann Maurice in a statement to the water board, summing up many residents' sentiments. "It is not grass that is causing the problem. It is irrigated vineyards."

In what many see as a response to public pressure, the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission, an industry trade group, announced last week that 68 of the 130 vineyards in the four watersheds have committed to a voluntary 25 percent reduction in water use relative to 2013 levels. According to commission president Karissa Kruse, these 68 properties include about 2,000 acres of land.

Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore, whose district encompasses more Russian River stream miles than that of any other county supervisor, has been strongly involved in developing the county's response to the water board regulations and was the only supervisor to attend any of the state's so-called community meetings.

"I applaud the winegrowers for stepping up," Gore says in an interview. "I think they saw the writing on the wall. They knew they weren't going to continue to be exempt from this sort of regulation for long, and there are also winegrowers already doing good things in those watersheds who wanted to tell their stories."

Initially, state and federal officials who crafted the regulation said they preferred cutting off "superfluous" uses as a first step. "Our target is not irrigation that provides an economic benefit," says State Water Resources Control Board member Dorene D'Adamo of Stanislaus. D'Adamo has been the five-member board's point person for developing the regulations and was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown as its "agricultural representative."

Many residents argue that there is no way of monitoring the vineyards' compliance with the voluntary cutback because their water use has never been metered. Moreover, these residents' passionate response to the regulation did not emerge in a vacuum. Rather, it tapped a deep well of resentment regarding the long-standing preferential treatment they say state, county and even federal officials have accorded the powerful, multibillion dollar regional wine industry.

As longtime Mark West Creek area resident Laura Waldbaum notes, her voice sharpening into an insistent tone, "The problem in Mark West Creek did not start with the drought."

Continues here

They sent me one of the nastiest letters I have ever gotten about how they were going to fine me each day I didn't respond to their survey. Then when I go to respond on their website (the only way you can respond) their website to respond doesn't work and they aren't sure when it will work. I guess they wan't me to stop watering my garden on my property where my house has been more than 110 years before my neighbors vineyard went in? I pretty much quit watering already because the gophers have gone wild because of the drought. If you have the sandy loam of west county in your garden, I have found it works fantastically well to put newspaper down and cover it with mulch. Then you can poke holes in it to plant. You will only need to water once or twice for a few minutes a week for most plants.

I fully support all reasonable measures to attempt build back the coho population.

Reasonable measures

You want to grow grapes, dry farm or plant the apple trees back. No new vineyards until the coho population has recovered.

No low density developments like the one planned in Graton (that development's well comes from the same aquifer that I'm on.

Coho populations have been destroyed by reckless agricultural development in the Russian River Watershed. Fix that mess and the fish may come back.