news story / By Heidi Walters

Water Boarding

It’s not just for wonks anymore

(Oct. 16, 2008)  Who’s running for — YaWWNn — the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District Board? You turned on the tap today. Water came out, and it was good. End of story — good job, people, carry on.

Um, nuh-uh. This race is an edge-of-seater. Think geysering water rates. Water grabs. Sharp-shelled creatures that clog and destroy. Odd, mysterious politicos. But, mostly, those water rates.

GALLERY >

I mean, did you hear? Evergreen Pulp Mill’s closing this week. Aside from the disaster of hundreds of jobs-in-suspense, the closure highlights the water district’s already fragile grasp on maintaining reasonable water rates. Evergreen is the water district’s only industrial customer these days. The mill pays almost half the district’s costs of running the regional water system, and it uses more water than the 80,000 people served by the district’s seven other wholesale customers — the cities of Eureka, Arcata and Blue Lake, and the community services districts for Cutten, Manila, McKinleyville and Fieldbrook.

The mill closure is temporary — once the economy pumps strong again and China wants its cardboard, Evergreen’s back in business. But if things don’t go well, and it stays shut? Water rates could triple.

This tough circumstance is hardly new. There used to be two pulp mills, using between them 60 million gallons of water a day; the seven municipal customers collectively use around 10 mgd. One of the mills closed in 1998; rates for the rest of the customers soared. Then the remaining mill cut its usage from 30 mgd to 15 mgd when it changed to a bleach-free operation.

And this caused a secondary dilemma: If the HBMWD can’t lure in another big industrial customer, or several industrial customers, or some other beneficial use to sell the excess water capacity to, it could lose its right to that water — in California, water belongs to the state, which grants rights to it for specific uses. If you don’t use the water rights you’ve been permitted, eventually they go back into the pool. And somebody else might get them. We’ve already seen a panicky preview of this — remember the deflected water bag scheme, where entrepreneurs materialized offering to bag the Mad River’s precious fluids and float them south to the peopled Droughtland?

For now, however tenuously, the district has secured a new 25-year contract with the state for all of its water rights. But the privateers are still sniffing around for easy water. To preempt them, the district has formed a plan — voted on and approved last week — to form a multi-stakeholder think tank to develop a strategy for dealing with these water resource challenges.

The district’s water future is arguably its biggest issue. Maybe that’s why water board elections have been more interesting of late. It used to be a guy — until recently, it was always guys — could get on the water board and stay there, if he liked, running uncontested term after four-year term. Now all kinds of people want to serve, and this is the keenest election yet. Nine people are running for three seats on the five-director board.

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