AQUIFER OVERDRAFTS FEARED; WATER PROVIDERS FIGHT ENVIRONMENTALISTS IN BOOMING SCV.

Byline: Jason Takenouchi Daily News Staff Writer

As long as water runs when they turn on their faucets, most residents here worry little about the resource that is considered key to the Santa Clarita Valley's explosive growth.

But behind the scenes, the battle over the valley's water supply is anything but calm. Recent lawsuits and threatened lawsuits, monopoly fears and regulatory complaints could bring a drastic change in the way water is used, and allocated, in one of the county's fastest-growing regions.

Anyone with property rights and a pump can draw unlimited amounts of water from the valley's two underground aquifers. But according to one top state official, growing conflicts may eventually lead to the same tough pumping limits and oversight that hit the Los Angeles basin in 1979, after a 24-year court battle that pitted Los Angeles against San Fernando, Burbank and others.

``There's nothing like that in the Santa Clarita basin because nothing has gone wrong yet, but it looks like it's getting pretty close,'' said Fred Curry, chief of the water advisory branch of the California Public Utility Commission's Water Division.

``The way California works, you wait until you have an emergency and then you do something about it.''

While the valley's four water providers say there is little reason to be concerned, the stakes are high for both current residents and the tens of thousands expected to pour into the area in coming years. According to a study released recently by the Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Health Foundation, the valley's population will grow 242 percent by 2030, increasing from about 196,000 residents to nearly 475,000 residents.

Even without that population boom - which could more than double the regional demand for water - environmentalists already are clashing with developers over whether there is enough water.

The latest skirmishes in this running battle are two formal complaints, currently before the PUC, looking to limit the expansion of the Valencia Water Co., a private company that supplies about 40 percent of the area's retail water. Over half of that water is from local aquifers; the remaining amount is imported from the State Water Project.

In the complaints, the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club argues the company has run out of water and, along with the area's other water providers, is overdrafting and destroying the valley's major groundwater source, the Santa Clara River aquifer.

``Anyone who lives out there is dependent on water,'' said Martin Schlageter, conservation director for the organization's Angeles Chapter, which covers Los Angeles County and Orange County. ``Once you start to overpump it, you're reaching into your pockets and into your savings account to put your next bet on the craps table.''

Schlageter and other critics say water companies are overstating supplies to feed development and are not planning with an eye toward potential long-term droughts.

Valencia Water president Robert DiPrimio said the Sierra Club complaints are unfounded. He said the organization is targeting his company because it is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Newhall Land and Farming Company.

Newhall Land, the dominant developer in the Santa Clarita Valley, is behind the controversial 21,615-home Newhall Ranch project near Six Flags California.

``There is absolutely not an overdraft in this valley,'' DiPrimio said. ``We have enough water for the next 10 to 15 years.''

Valencia Water has won out over similar complaints in the past, and the PUC ruled last month that the company had enough water for a different expansion of its service territory.

But the company still faces significant resistance.

Schlageter and others say a recent study by valley water providers proves the Santa Clara River is being overdrafted.

According to the Santa Clarita Valley Water Report, released in February, pumps are drawing far more than the estimated 32,500 acre-feet of water that seeps into, or recharges, the Santa Clara River's underground aquifer each year.

An acre-foot is more than 325,000 gallons of water, enough for two average families' needs for a year.

Specter of court-imposed limits

The report said 33,100 acre-feet were pumped in 1994, considered a drought year, and over 32,500 acre-feet have been pumped in every year since then.

Pumping reached its peak in 1997, a year of near-average rainfall, when 39,600 acre-feet were pumped, 22 percent more than the estimated annual yield.

Those figures should set off alarm bells, said Mel Blevins, water master for the San Fernando Valley. Blevins was appointed chief regulator of the Upper Los Angeles River Area after a landmark 1979 court decision set pumping levels for the region's aquifers.

``With almost all groundwater basins, if you overpump it one year, you have to replace it the next, and the overpumpage can only be 10 percent a year,'' Blevins said.

``If you go in a direction where you just keep pumping water and there's no regard at all to the yield of the basin,'' he said, ``you're in for a significant problem.''

If consensus cannot be reached by pumpers, Blevins said, it may have to come

in the form of court-imposed limits regulated by a water master.

High levels in wells

But area water providers say pumping limits are not needed because the river is not in overdraft.

DiPrimio, the Valencia Water Co. president, said he believes the aquifer's perennial yield estimate - by a groundwater geologist hired by the area's water providers - is conservative. In certain years, he said, thousands of additional acre-feet can be pumped from the underground source.

The geologist, Richard Slade, said the numbers were neither conservative nor liberal.

``It's just what the numbers show,'' Slade said. ``We used one of the classic methods.''

DiPrimio and other water providers also say water levels in wells were at record highs in 1998. High levels generally indicate a healthy aquifer.

Slade and Blevins, the San Fernando Valley watermaster, agreed that high well levels were a good sign.

But Blevins said those levels alone were not enough to support current pumping levels.

``It's something that needs to be evaluated,'' he said.

William Manetta, the president of the valley's other major provider, the Santa Clarita Water Co., said environmentalists are using water issues as a scare tactic to stop development.

Separate suits filed

The Santa Clara River aquifer is not in overdraft, Manetta said, adding that the area's other aquifer could supply enough water to outlast a drought.

``They're trying to create a doomsday, to use water politically to try to stop any kind of growth,'' he said. ``It's almost laughable if it wasn't so serious.''

The Sierra Club actions are far from the biggest water fights to hit this North Los Angeles County area.

Environmental groups and the County of Ventura recently filed separate suits last month against the massive Newhall Ranch development, in part over the project's potential effect on groundwater resources.

The city of Santa Clarita and the Castaic Lake Water Agency, the area's only provider of imported water from the State Water Project, are also squaring off over the purchase of the area's biggest retail water company, the Santa Clarita Water Co.

City officials say the agency cannot legally purchase a retail water company and have set the stage for a lawsuit if the agency succeeds in buying Santa Clarita Water. Agency officials say they would run the company more efficiently and that the city would create an unnecessary bureaucracy at the water company.

The Castaic agency has also come under attack by the Friends of the Santa Clara River, and environmental group that filed suit late last month over the agency's recent $47 million purchase of rights to more state water.

Statewide problem indicated

But importantly, none of these conflicts have pitted water pumpers against one another in court, the scenario most likely to end with limits on pumping levels.

``Right now, the water purveyors in this area get along pretty well,'' said Thomas Shollenberger, general manager of the Newhall County Water District, one of four Santa Clarita water providers.

But some critics say pumpers are opposed to limits because it would hamper the area's booming growth.

``No one wants to face this issue in the Santa Clarita Valley right now because it imposes a limit,'' said Michael Kotch, a director of the Castaic Lake Water Agency and president of a local environmental group.

Bill Craven, state director of the Sierra Club, said Santa Clarita is a prime example of a statewide problem that threatens people as well as the environment.

``When people move to spend money on a house, or when a business moves into a new area,'' he said, ``they don't deserve to be jacked around by smoke-and-mirror numbers from real estate speculators trying to get them to believe there's water everywhere in California.''