This week’s column is dedicated to our readers in the Kaweah’s watershed, so I hope those of you in the Kings’ and Tule’s won’t mind sitting back to watch. It’s my last chance to speak to my nearest neighbors about the ongoing election to form the Consolidated Water District, and the importance of the decision some of them have been asked to make. Should it be formed, yes or no? If yes, do you approve the slate of five people as board members-at-large?
Having slipped through LAFCO mostly unnoticed in September and October, 2024, this district is destined to control some of our most bountiful, well-watered land—unless the resident landowners defeat the ballot measure. Here’s why it’s important.
This district formation is a transfer of water ownership from several private ditch companies to a single public entity. The promoters chose to form as a water district over other available options (such as an irrigation district, which apparently was never considered for reasons they would not disclose.) Water districts have a peculiar form of governance left over from the plantation system which restricts the right to vote to landowners only and weights votes according to the amount of property owned. Known as “property qualification,” and “property-weighted voting,” these provisions have been eliminated as blatantly inequitable from most forms of special districts across the nation.
There is a further anomaly: these landowners “need not be resident” (as it’s worded in the water codes), nor do they need to be registered voters in this county or any other. The votes will be counted according to each parcel’s assessed land value—without improvements—one dollar, one vote. (An election to approve an irrigation district would have been one person, one vote for every registered voter living within the proposed district boundaries.) This same voting structure will apply in future elections for board members, approving bonds and funding for infrastructure improvements, only without the participation by the county elections department: unlike irrigation districts, water districts run their own elections.
What the nonresidency option provides is an invitation to corporate agribusiness firms, hedge funds and insurance companies to buy up parcels where- and whenever they become available to gain control over water decisions and supplies. The disadvantages to smaller landowners within district boundaries cannot be overemphasized—unless they’re looking to cash out.
Another voting disadvantage to resident smaller-scale farm owner-operators comes from the land values used: “without improvements.” This isn’t the fault of the elections department; it’s part of the water codes for water districts, and one of the reasons “homeless farm” landowners prefer them. But which “improvements” are being eliminated?
As of this writing, in this election it is not clear whether the “improvements” that are being excluded are only the “structural improvements” such as homes and outbuildings, or also the “growing improvements” such as groves and vineyards. There is a huge discrepancy between the total land values reported in the LAFCO analysis ($922,325,159) and the value used by the elections department ($488,019,368, which the staff member there believes reflects the bare land value only.) This smaller number is the “dirt” value on which the ballots were calculated, all 1671 of them, and on which the percentage of the yeses and nos will be decided. It’s bad enough not to count the investment of a farm’s home and outbuildings, but not counting their permanent plantings would disadvantage our small resident farmers even further, making the unimproved owners (resident or not) on par with families that have spent years, sometimes generations, building homes and farms on this precious river’s land.
Additionally, the presence of water district powerhouses in the groundwater management process has been nothing short of disastrous. Legal scholars have identified the voting structure as the evil to be rooted out—if we could find a way to out-vote that power. The last thing we need is to give them more power.
Many farms served by these historic ditches were the first in Tulare County, even in the San Joaquin Valley, because the Kaweah was the easiest river to divert in small hand-dug ditches. The proposed district looks like a white area on the LAFCO maps—but it’s the greenest, most well-watered place we’ve got. Don’t let the big boys take it away. For your sake and ours, please vote no.
Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes. Send her your water code reform suggestions c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247. This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of the Mid Valley Times newspaper.
