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Planning Commission sends revised groundwater ordinance to supervisors

The county’s Planning Commission sent proposed revisions to the county’s groundwater ordinance involving residential well test requirements and boundary adjustments to the Board of Supervisors with a positive recommendation.

A 5-0 Planning Commission vote November 17, with commissioners Bryan Woods and David Kreitzer absent, recommended approval of the ordinance changes. The ordinance is expected to be heard by the supervisors in late January.

“It seems like there’s plenty of time for the folks who want to give input,” said Planning Commissioner Michael Beck. “There’s a way to backstop this if we have to.”

The public comment at the Planning Commission was supportive of the ordinance changes but wary about the lack of notice provided to community planning groups. “I’m actually very much in favor of it,” said Michael Thometz of Campo. “We’ve been very supportive of groundwater issues from the very beginning.”

The November 17 agenda of the Planning Commission was made available to the public on November 10, but community planning groups were not notified of the docketed item. “This is an issue with us,” Thometz said.

“I’m in favor of this, but I’m just protesting the way it’s being handled,” Thometz said. “This is a good thing, but you’ve got to do a better job.”

Since the Campo-Lake Morena Community Planning Group did not have an opportunity to review the proposed updates, Larry Johnson spoke to the Planning Commission as an individual rather than as the co-chair of Groundwater Subcommittee of the Campo-Lake Morena Community Planning Group. “Basically I think they are very good changes. I think they are heading in the right direction,” Johnson said. “I’m in support of what they’re doing.”

The county’s existing groundwater ordinance was reviewed earlier this year by county groundwater geologist Jim Bennett and by a Groundwater Technical Advisory Committee established by the county’s Department of Planning and Land Use. The review identified two revisions which could protect groundwater resources by verifying that a long-term sustainable supply was available to serve proposed development. One of those revisions involves changing the residential well test requirements while the other revision would add boundary adjustments to the list of discretionary projects subject to the groundwater ordinance.

“Sustainability is a complex issue and lots more than just how much water you’ve got in the ground,” Johnson said.

The existing ordinance requires analysis of the performance capability of a given well but does not analyze long-term yield. Existing regulations require between one and five well tests, based on the number of proposed lots in the development, to be performed for subdivisions outside of a water service area which propose to use groundwater. Since steep slope areas typically have relatively less groundwater in storage than valley areas, more well tests for potentially marginal lots may verify that a long-term sustainable supply of groundwater is available, and the new ordinance allows the director of the Department of Planning and Land Use to require additional well tests beyond the initial amount required.

The existing ordinance requires the performance capacity of a well to meet or exceed three minimum standards: production of no less than three gallons per minute, recovery of 90 percent of total drawdown within 12 hours of termination of production, and production of at least two full well bore volumes (a bore volume is the quantity of water stored within the saturated portion of the well’s drilled annulus).

The 90 percent drawdown recovery requirement would be replaced with two new criteria which would analyze long-term yield. The first would analyze the amount of residual drawdown projected from the well test, indicating whether the well is located in an aquifer of limited extent; if a consequential amount of residual drawdown is projected the long-term yield may be lower than what the well test would indicate. The second criteria projects whether the well would have sufficient water after five years of pumping at the rate of projected water demand; that conservatively assumes that no groundwater recharge occurs during that period and thus accounts for a worst-case drought scenario.

The long-term yield tests also force the creation of a minimum 24-hour time period of well production to perform reliable analysis, although tests with a specific capacity of at least 0.5 gallons per minute per foot of drawdown may be terminated after eight hours of production.

The amended ordinance would also stipulate that well tests must be performed under the direct supervision of a state-recognized professional geologist, which would eliminate allowing registered drilling contractors or registered pump contractors from performing the work and submitting well test reports. Most tests submitted by drilling or pump contractors have resulted in inadequate data collection or analysis and required additional tests. Under the new ordinance, drilling or pump contractors could still perform the field work if they are under the direct supervision of a professional geologist.

The groundwater ordinance also includes minimum parcel lot sizes for areas outside of a water service agency. The minimum lot sizes are based on mean annual precipitation and range from four acres for more than 21 inches of precipitation to 20 acres for less than nine inches. Boundary adjustments would be required to comply with those minimum lot sizes, although existing lots created at smaller sizes would not be subject if the boundary adjustment does not reduce the lot size. Boundary adjustments would also be subject to residential well testing requirements.

“I want this thing through because I’ve been waiting nine months for something to come up,” said Judy Swift, a Dulzura widow who is trying to subdivide her 16-acre lot into two eight-acre parcels so that her daughter can live nearby.

 

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