Cheri Carlson Ventura County Star
Published 10:00 AM EDT Mar 18, 2020
An Ojai Valley water district has pulled out of mediation talks with the city of Ventura and others after months of negotiation over water rights.
Those talks started after the city of Ventura filed a cross-complaint in response to a 2014 lawsuit over its own pumping from the Ventura River. Santa Barbara Channelkeeper had filed the lawsuit, alleging the city of Ventura was taking too much water from the river, hurting habitat for steelhead trout and other wildlife.
The organization sued to compel the state to intervene, analyze the city’s pumping and set conditions on it if appropriate.
The city then sought to bring in other users of the river, including the Casitas Municipal Water District.
On Tuesday, Casitas officials said they would withdraw from the current mediation. The board unanimously made that decision, according to General Manager Mike Flood.
"At this point, the directors have decided that there's not any benefit that is on the horizon and they're going to step away from it for the time being," Flood said.
Mediation talks were underway among major users of the Ventura River in January, when the city of Ventura sent roughly 14,000 legal notices and summonses to other property owners.
Those notices were sent to people with properties near the Ventura River or one of the area's groundwater basins, a step toward a potential water rights adjudication.
City officials have said they would like to reach a negotiated settlement among water users, which would mean a full adjudication of water rights would not be necessary.
Calls to drop litigation
But some called on the city to drop the legal action, saying costly litigation was the wrong way to reach an agreement. People had concerns about impacts to their properties and their water rights.
Two Casitas board members publicly urged the city to drop its cross-complaint at least temporarily. Talks among the major water users could continue, they proposed. Instead of trying to reach a legal judgment, they could work toward reaching a memorandum of understanding.
Then, individual property owners would be excluded from legal notice, according to Casitas.
The city passed on that suggestion but said it would request a six-month extension for those property owners, which the court granted late last month.
Ventura officials said the extension would give property owners more time to decide whether to join the lawsuit and also give the parties that are already talking time to get closer to a settlement.
Those parties included the city of Ventura, Casitas, two other local water districts, and some large agricultural users. With Casitas pulling out, it's unclear how those discussions will be impacted.
Late Tuesday, Ventura’s Assistant City Manager Akbar Alikhan said the city had learned about Casitas' decision earlier in the day.
He didn’t have any comment about the impact of the decision at this time, saying the city was focused on its response to the coronavirus.
“The health and safety of our residents is paramount. We’re entirely focused on that,” Alikhan said. “I’m sure we’ll have more to offer in the days to come, but right now as you can imagine, we’re just focused on the health and well-being of everybody.”
Decision to withdraw
In a news release, Casitas officials explained their reasons for the decision, saying they did not believe the process was collaborative.
"I had hoped that all parties would have been working together frankly, but we can see that was not the case," said Pete Kaiser, a member of the Casitas board.
The district said that contrary to the understanding of a collaborative approach, Ventura's attorneys "unilaterally delivered thousands of legal notices, creating confusion and angst" for Casitas and its customers back in January.
Then in early March, its attorneys "once again unilaterally delivered thousands of notices" that included claims the district had not reviewed and did not support. Casitas said the move demonstrated a lack of good faith.
The city sent out postcards in March to notify those who had received notices about the extension. But the city also included other information, including saying that it and other large water users "share the belief that a court-approved, local, collaborative approach is the right path."
It described "large water users" as districts, municipalities and ag representatives.
If an agreement is reached, the city also said it would not litigate its cross-complaint, according to a postcard from the city.
On Tuesday, Casitas board president Russ Baggerly said he doesn't know if that's true.
Agreement still possible
As far as mediation, Baggerly said, the talks over the past year had done a good job of dealing with the low-hanging fruit. But agreement on difficult issues wasn't even close.
The stipulated judgment would include keeping the endangered species such as steelhead trout in good condition, he said. The fish lives in water and there has to be water in the river for the fish to be left in good condition.
"How that's going to happen, I don't think anybody knows," Baggerly said.
"I think that Casitas needs to be strong, needs to be vigilant, needs to be acting on its own behalf to protect its water rights," he said of the decision to withdraw from the mediation.
The process involved too many lawyers and not enough policymakers, according to Baggerly. A memorandum of understanding between the major parties could still be reached, he said.
"But behind closed doors and with only the attorneys running thshow, that's going to be an expensive and a controversial process with little chance of success."
Cheri Carlson covers the environment for the Ventura County Star. Reach her at cheri.carlson@vcstar.com or 805-437-0260.
Published 10:00 AM EDT Mar 18, 2020