MILLIRON (AND MOSS) IN THE FIRE
In any given year, 40% of the water that sustains California comes from the state’s groundwater. That’s the same water stored in the permeable rocks beneath our feet—aquifers. It’s the same water that sustains industry and community. It’s the water that your neighbor pumps from his well.
It’s only when those wells run dry that “we know the worth of water.” Benjamin Franklin said that. Luckily for Franklin, his young America had not yet subjected its groundwater to overdraft—a common practice in recent years, both in California and across the United States, that occurs when more water is going out than coming in.
Adequate management is paramount in a state where The Scientific American estimates that at least 1.5 million people rely on groundwater wells.
That makes the upcoming election for a seat on the Tri-Valley Groundwater Management District (TVGMD) Board of Directors an important one. The mission at the core of the TVGMD is stated on Mono County’s website as “to preserve the groundwater within the boundaries of the District,” specifically within the Chalfant, Hammil, and Benton Valleys, and a portion of Fish Slough Ecological Reserve.
Curtis Milliron and Don Moss are candidates for the seat.
Milliron has been a resident of Chalfant for the past 34 years. He’s worked for the California Department of Fish and Game as a fishery biologist, studying and managing aquatic resources throughout the state. In its founding years, Milliron served on the Long Valley Hydrologic Advisory Committee, studying the interactions between cold and thermal groundwater aquifers, such as those found in nearby Hot Creek.
“I feel compelled to run,” said Milliron. “The data is something I can get my head around.”
And what Milliron sees in the data gives him cause for concern.
“California got in the game pretty late,” said Milliron, referencing the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. The law was passed in 2014, and established groundwater as a shared source that should be managed, sustainably, by local bodies. But as Milliron lamented, “2014 wasn’t that long ago.”
In Milliron’s home, Chalfant Valley, he reports that the water table is declining anywhere from five inches to a little more than half of a foot each year. According to Milliron, that decline has been a steady one, trending downward for the past 30 to 40 years.
“It’s not drastic,” he said of the decline, “but it is steady… I’ve been here over 30 years, and I’ve seen a lot of wells go bad and have to be re-drilled. And as I walk around and talk to people, I’m finding that that’s a pretty common story.”
Donald Moss, who has called Hammil Valley home since 1970, warns against basing management decisions of the Tri-Valley Area’s groundwater off of a few “discrete data points.”
Moss, a civil engineer who has spent over 35 years building, operating, and managing hydroelectric power plants throughout the state—half of which are located in the Tri-Valley Area—believes that “dozens of factors affect an individual well … many of which don’t have anything to do with the actual water table, itself.”
“I have not seen the extreme depletion of the groundwater that some are suggesting,” said Moss.
Sustainability was a word mentioned by both candidates, in the context of maintaining the equilibrium between domestic and agricultural interests when it comes to groundwater.
Agriculture is the state’s largest consumer of water, with California farms using an estimated 40% of available groundwater, and 80% of all water used by homes and businesses, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. And as a breadbasket of the United States—producing approximately 40% of the country’s produce and nut supply—California agriculture’s access to sufficient water sources holds significance for the US, at large.
“My campaign poster is simple,” said Milliron. “It says ‘Water for All,’ and agriculture is a part of [that]. Yes, they’re heavy users of water. But the last thing we want to do is hurt the agriculture industry. What we do want is to develop the use of the resource in a sustainable manner.”
“I believe in groundwater sustainability, whether you are a farmer or a homeowner,” said Moss. “Neither can survive if the groundwater is depleted.”
As Milliron acknowledged, many community members view the management of groundwater as a “pro- vs. anti-agriculture” debate.
But that debate is a figurative one. According to Moss, “This was never supposed to be an elected position … there hasn’t been a normal process with debates.”
So, until the election on November 7, both Moss and Milliron will be holding public meet-and-greet sessions to voice their sides of the issues before Mono County voters.
Milliron will be at the Big Trees Nursery in Chalfant this Saturday, at 4 p.m. Moss’s appearance dates are yet to be announced.
The last day to register to vote for the upcoming election is October 23. For more information, visit https://monocounty.ca.gov/elections/page/november-7-2023-special-district-election.
