From the April 21st Full CAC meeting. Left to Right: Caryl Hart, Andy Rodgers, Vickie Mulas, Rand Dericco, Donna Mazzuchi, Don Marquardt, Dick Fogg, and Rick Savel.

Anyone attending Citizen Advisory Council (CAC) meetings on the Water Resources Element (WRE)—the document destined to become Sonoma County's water policy—or people who sat in on the now-defunct Water Resources Element Sub-Committee may be excused if they seem puzzled at the County's constant denial of a water problem. Everyone from Supervisors to County staff members and Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA) minions have repeatedly claimed that there are insufficient data to declare a problem.

No water problem?

Ignoring Sonoma County's water disaster is about as difficult as ignoring the proverbial elephant in the living room. You would have to be profoundly impaired physically or a liar to say there is no problem.

H.R. Downs expands on this curiosity in another one of his polemical editorials.

The April 21 CAC meeting was peppered with suggestions from County staff members that there is no evidence of a water problem and that to find out if there is a water problem would cost $300,000, and other similar denials.

For more than a year reams of documentary evidence have been submitted to the CAC and the former Water Resource sub-committee detailing the well-known water catastrophe in Sonoma County. Apparently nobody at the County bothered to look at these documents.

The voting members on the CAC have not seen much of this material either because the County has not forwarded it to them. Greg Carr once wondered aloud at the impracticality of making copies of this material describing it as "a truckload". If not a truckload then it is certainly a bushel-basket full of evidence that reveals a serious water crisis.

CAC members have not even received an index of this material that would at least allow them to order up from the County dungeons what papers they might wish to inspect. "What water problem?" Supervisor Paul Kelly once reportedly said.

Evidence is official too

One substantial section of Sonoma County has been accurately studied by professional scientists. PES Environmental, Inc. chalked out a study area that includes Rohnert Park, Cotati, Penngrove, and Sonoma State University (SSU). What did they find? A massive groundwater overdraft and a depleted water table; a direct result of Rohnert Park over-pumping groundwater. Rohnert Park not only paid for this study, the City faithfully printed the results in their own Environmental Impact Report (EIR).

The company that produced the Rohnert Park EIR only examined a small, 6 mile by 4 mile area. This study area has an annualized groundwater recharge rate of 1.6 million gallons a day. Winter rains seep through the ground in various porous areas to refill the underlying water table. PES Environmental, Inc. estimated that this recharge process, averaged over a period of one year, is 1.6 million gallons a day.

But Rohnert Park alone pumps more than 4 million gallons a day. Cotati draws about 400,000 gallons a day, SSU 164,000 gallons, and Penngrove about 300,000 gallons. Combine these figures, and subtract the recharge rate, and 3.5 million more gallons of water are taken out of the ground every day than are put back in during the rainy season.

This one sample alone provides sufficient reason to study every single water-consuming area of the County in a search for similar deficits. In fact, the Rohnert Park water disaster is much worse than it looks.

The Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA) pumps 1.7 million gallons a day, immediately adjacent to this arbitrary study zone but from the same aquifer. Although these wells are designated as "emergency wells" by the SCWA, they have been pumping 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for years. It's difficult to imagine that the line delineating the study area narrowly excluded this massive pumping by mistake. If the extra 1.7 million gallons are included in the overdraft we have a whopping 5.2 million-gallon-a-day deficit—a huge water problem.

Nevertheless, Rohnert Park intends to go forward with plans to put another 4,500 houses and another 5 million square feet of commercial space directly on top of land already recognized as prime groundwater recharge areas. So not only will the groundwater reservoir be sealed off with asphalt and denied needed refill waters during the rainy months, thousands of water consumers will inhabit this asphalt jungle and pump out what water remains.

If we destroy the aquifer we will never get it back.

OK, Forget the Rohnert Park study

The Sonoma County government hardly needs such elaborate, official and detailed outside proof of a water catastrophe. They are sitting on all the proof they need. Wells all over the County are going dry. Some people have drilled new wells and found no water forcing them to truck water to their homes.

The County issues permits for all well drilling and has for a hundred years or more. These well drilling permits don't just let people bore holes in the ground; they generate confidential data called Driller's Logs that must be submitted to the County.

Driller's logs contain detailed descriptions of the strata encountered as the drill went down into the earth. This data can be used to create a detailed picture of groundwater reserves over time, because the County has records extending back many decades. But just the data over last 30 years would reveal whose wells had gone dry and who was forced to re-drill and how deep they had to go.

Driller Logs are not public information. They are confidential because water resources can dramatically affect real estate values—a subject with which landowners are understandably squeamish. But this information must be submitted to the County and County officials have every right to examine it, especially if they are trying to prevent the destruction of Sonoma County's aquifer. Saving the aquifer is a safety issue of the highest priority.

The Water Resources Element states that "In 2002, there were approximately 40,000 wells in Sonoma County, with 42% of the population supported at least in part by groundwater." But for all practical purposes, everyone in Sonoma County relies on groundwater either as a direct source or as a backup water supply—see sidebar.

Read the Kleinfelder Report

The County has in fact commissioned a study of water resources by the Kleinfelder engineering firm. Obviously, it is important to know the status of our water supplies, a sentiment echoed by Supervisor Valerie Brown who described the importance of the Kleinfelder Report to a reporter by saying "You can't know where you're going until you know where you are."

Any intelligent planning hinges on this report.

Amazingly, County officials awkwardly suggested at the April 21st CAC meeting that the information in this report should not be seen by CAC members. These are the very people who are voting on water policy.

When CAC member Vickie Mulas demanded that the full CAC be shown the Kleinfelder Report, Greg Carr suggested that Kleinfelder's preliminary findings were unacceptable and that the CAC probably would not see the report.

An audible gasp rose from the assembled public.

What on earth did Greg Carr mean? Not being allowed to see a major study of the County's groundwater has fueled red-hot suspicions. The Kleinfelder Report, must be political dynamite. It must prove what everyone has been saying all along, that groundwater in Sonoma County has suffered a serious decline over previous decades. Now that the County is attempting to conceal the results of the Kleinfelder Report, what else could the report possibly say?

If the Kleinfelder Report reveals abundant water resources, enough to support future building, then let's see it. The smart money is betting that the Kleinfelder Report says what many other experts in the field have already said, that Sonoma County is facing a serious water problem.

And remember the Kleinfelder Report only looked at areas considered "water scarce". The more than 2,000 acres of unincorporated Penngrove land has already seen numerous dry wells and Penngrove is supposed to be a "water rich" area.

To solve this serious problem we need a water policy in the General Plan that has real teeth to stop irresponsible development and stop the destruction of groundwater recharge areas. We also most likely need a Groundwater Management Plan like so many other counties in California that share our fate of dwindling water supplies.