Our Future Water Supply and Costs Depend on Your Vote

By Chuck Bennett

Who Controls Our Water and Costs?

As Bureaucrats outside our area work to ultimately control our water supply, they do not have to live with their lack of good research. Those enforced decisions have little or no historical underpinning from our area. We must live with it! We will be paying plenty for it!

The bureaucrats are taking your water payments. The state is taking it directly by confiscation and the feds are spending it through mounting dictatorial mandates that may or may not benefit us. This requires the Casitas board to raise rates and fees.
These power grabs and seizing of control of water are tolerated so the state and fed might be nice to us and give us some money back in the form of grants.
Tax money and fees are ours to begin with. It doesn't belong to the empire building bureaucrats and the one-issue self-serving pressure groups.
With the new nine million dollar fish bypass facility to be paid for, we find it costing $250 thousand per year, just to maintain it! Include the state taking a lot of our income and more federal dictates are driving your water rates up and up with no end in sight.
Staff at Casitas has left no stone unturned looking for cost-effective new supplies of water: water conservation is the biggest one and we are working hardest on that; water desalinization; more wells; water-banking; a pipeline to state water; applications for any grant funding. You name it; it's on our list and being worked on.

Forced permanent conservation is on the horizon.

But conservation alone will not be enough. If costs go up much more for farmers, our beautiful green belts will turn brown. We must work hard to assure abundant clean affordable water well into the future. All our water is rainwater, we manage it locally, let's get these bureaucrats off our back.

Bennett Initiated the Federal Takings Claim Case

Chuck Bennett made the motion: If we the citizens of the United States want to require tremendous amounts of water (more than a swimming pool per minute) to flush past our diversion canal to attract steelhead trout, then all Americans should share in that cost--especially the cost of replacing Ojai Valley's precious water lost to the ocean. There is no good science that says we must pass by that much water to save fish. Casitas has hired excellent fisheries biologists to produce good science here, in our river. The fed would not wait for good science.

After spending nine million for the fish ladder touted to be the Cadillac (Bennett tried arm-twisting for a VW--considering our budget) we find the screens to bypass the smallest fish, plug with debris and stay plugged. Result--we are additionally losing 30% to 70% of the precious water they left us to collect. Casitas staff says we may not be able to fix it.

This is an incredibly serious issue.

Bennett's opponent says, in the Ventura County Star, (Oct. 26, 2006) that "the current fish ladder lawsuit with federal government, to facilitate the passage of endangered trout, is a waste of money" In effect, filing the Takings Claim was a mistake, we should suffer all the hardships here on our own and that "$375,000" now is too much to pay in legal fees. Try going without water at the bottom of a few severe droughts. This is certainly where we could be headed with single focused leadership.

We pay a few hundred dollars per acre foot now--below average in So. Calif.--Bennett is proud of that. During the last drought Santa Barbara paid $1000. per acre foot and they had a pipeline to get it. It is anticipated we could pay upwards $3000--if it is available at any price. And we would have to build an emergency pipeline at a cost of--you don't want to know.
Filing the takings claim made good business water management sense (very similar to the Tulare judgment--same judge too) and it makes good moral sense--it was the right thing to do for our ratepayers. Why the entire burden on you? Constant rate increases will follow! Bennett is fighting for you.

Re-elect Chuck Bennett Casitas Municipal Water District

Outside Money Used to Remove Your Water Representatives

L.A. law firms have an interest in litigation, not water supply. They make money suing. San Francisco special interests groups have no interest in the well being of the inhabitants of this valley as long as their specific demands are met. These special interest groups contributed large amounts of money for their candidate in the last Water Board election. This can be verified at the Ventura County Election's office.

Proven Dedication A lot of important water issues will be discussed, but your elected water representative must be primarily focused on three: an assured long-term, affordable, clean water supply. Chuck Bennett, a business owner for thirty years, understands this.

Re-elect Chuck Bennett Casitas Municipal Water District, Div. 4