At the end of a record-setting three-year drought from 2020 to 2022, the Mendocino Wine industry managed to produce a comparative record amount of grapes in 2022, almost 62,000 tons, 30% more than the previous year, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s 2022 Preliminary Grape Crush Report for Mendocino County. Part of that large percentage increase is due to lower tonnages from the prior (drought) years. (In 2018 Mendo produced 82,000 tons of grapes. In 2020 it was down to 56,000 tons; and 49,000 tons in 2021.) But how could the tonnage have gone back up so much in 2022, the third drought year?
The only way grape tonnage goes up if acreage stays the same is more water. This is further proof that inland grape growers, aka the Cheap Water Mafia, took more than their share of water from Lake Mendocino as we suspected from the unusually high flow rates into the Russian River in the spring of 2022.
Conservatively speaking, Mendo grapes use a minimum of half an acre-foot of water per acre per year, more when watering new rootstocks or spraying for frost protection. So if Mendo produced 62,000 tons of grapes in 2022 on about 17,000 acres of grapes at about six tons per acre that’s about 8,500 acre-feet of water per year.
Lake Mendocino typically holds up to 70,000 acre feet nominally, but 80% of that is owned by Sonoma County. So in a good year there’s about 14,000 acre-feet available to Mendocino. In a drought year, Lake Mendocino would get only 20% of about 40,000 acre-feet.
Thus, even allowing for fluctuations in the numbers and the nature of these rough estimates, Mendo grape growers got most of Lake Mendocino’s available water during the severe drought years from 2020 to 2022.
You have to hand it to the Cheap Water Mafia. They have wormed their way into positions of control of most of Mendo’s water and cleverly arranged Mendo’s water affairs to make sure they get as much water as they need, first in line, at the time they need it, and at the lowest possible cost so that they can produce a $20-plus bottle of premium wine.
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Norm Thurston:
Mark Scaramella’s comments on the “water mafia” raise many good points. In fairness though, it is worth noting that only public agency in Mendocino County to financially participate in the construction of Coyote Dam was the Mendocino County Russian River Flood Control & Water Conservation Improvement District. That financial investment bought the District the rights to a certain amount of water stored in Lake Mendocino. The District is made up of farmlands adjoining the Russian River, downstream from Lake Mendocino. Those land owners issued bonds, which they paid off through debt service taxes over many years. For those folks, the term “free water” really does not apply.
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MS Replies: Fair enough. But…
1) I didn’t say “free,” I said “cheap.” Supervisor Dan Gjerde pointed out this glaring tax giveaway to the Cheap Water Mafia rather effectively during last year’s discussion of the proposed Fire Protection sales tax increment.
2) At the time those bonds were issued and paid off there was nowhere near the amount of grape acreage that there is today. In fact, they used the water to produce food (like pears and livestock), not intoxicants.
3) “Those folks” who paid off those bonds are no longer with us. The new owners of most of that land are grape growers who bought (or inherited) the land with the riparian water rights that they now abuse.
4) If the grape growers were paying fair market prices for their ag water they’d be able to accumulate a fund which could be used as seed money for increasing the capacity of Lake Mendocino, reducing their dependence on diminishing amounts of over-allocated inland water.
PS. Supervisor Glenn McGourty continues his blatant conflict of interest as a Russian River grape grower who personally profits from the inland water policies he has positioned himself to oversee, yet he refuses to recuse himself from inland water policy setting organizations including the Board of Supervisors.
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Norm Thurston:
In regards to the “Cheap Water Mafia”:
1) Sorry I quoted you as saying “free” water instead of “cheap”.
2) At the time the bonds were issued, most farms in the District grew pears, grapes and prunes. Yes, it is well known that vineyards account for a much greater share of farmed lands now. Regardless, the bonds carried no requirements to use the water only for non-intoxicants.
3) I referred to the folks that paid off the bonds. I should have included “and their successors” for clarity. But as people have come and gone, the properties remain in the District. The owners of those properties still enjoy the rights to some of the water stored in Lake Mendocino.
4) The MCRRFC & WCID received a water right in exchange for their contribution to the construction of the dam, so they do not purchase water. As a governmental entity, they are allowed to sell their water at a rate that covers their reasonable cost (including overhead) of providing the water. Governments have historically been prohibited from making huge profits on the sale of utilities because such a practice is ripe for abuse. If the District and its constituents wanted to help pay to raise the dam in exchange for additional water rights, I think the process would be similar to the original construction. If, however, you are suggesting they pay into a sinking fund to help raise the dam, in order to maintain their existing rights, they may want to have a say in that. And it would be prudent to have some reasonable assurance that the inflows into Lake Mendocino will be adequate meet existing storage capacity, let alone the significantly increased capacity provided by raising the dam.
My overall point is that these landowners stepped-up when no one else in Mendocino County would, and secured a right to a portion of water storage in Lake Mendocino. There is no guarantee that the Lake will always have enough water to meet that intended use, but the right remains whenever levels are adequate. It is not my intent to argue on behalf of farmers, who historically have gotten great deals on water purchases, regardless of the crop. Water usage and allocation is one of the major challenges facing us, and we should place peoples’ basic needs for water first on the list of priorities.
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Linda Bailey:
The bond for Coyote Project waters was paid by all property owners within the Russian River valley in Mendocino County, not just the farm lands. (Except Redwood Valley property owners who had asked to be excluded from the District.) For many years (about 30) the District charged no one, neither individuals nor water districts, for any water diverted under its right. Also, for many years no elections were held for the governing board of the District; a board member would resign before his term was up and the board would appoint his successor.
Auditor Provides CarryForward Estimate & Memo
A somewhat more reasonable discussion of the County’s financial reporting problems took place last Tuesday morning when County Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison provided a fund-balance carry over memo and tried yet again to explain to the mostly tone-deaf Supervisors the unnecessarily burdensome and disputatious conditions the Board has imposed on her office over the last two years. In the end the Board unanimously agreed to try to work together better between now and May 25 when they hope to take another shot at the subject.
Without a department by department plain English explanation by the departments, this accounting calculation provides some revenue and carryover info but presents more questions than answers.
Next up: the carryforward for this fiscal year which ends in about two months. Revenues are down, inflation is up, employees want raises, property values are collapsing… A final budget for next year is due to be finalized in June. Is this Board and its nearly silent CEO up to the task?
County Supervisors Refuse To Require Permits For Rural Motels
The County Planning Commission’s proposal to require use permits for certain short term rentals was unceremoniously dropped by the Supervisors on Tuesday, opposed most loudly by Supervisor Ted Williams and his libertarian view that people should be able to rent their houses without government interference. Local realtors and the wine-lodging-tourism lobby hated the idea too. The other four Supervisors weren’t quite as agitated as Williams, but they all felt that there are probably better ways to alleviate the County’s housing shortage than requiring somebody to apply for a permit to rent all or part of their house if they feel like it. So in the end they overturned the Planning Commission’s somewhat cumbersome and limited use-permit proposal in favor of revisiting the housing problem later, maybe someday, nebulously.
Of course, Official Mendo is completely incapable of doing anything about the housing problem as they’ve demonstrated time and again. They can’t even bring themselves to require a permit status report from their own Planning Department to stay on top of extended review and approval processes. And if short term rentals are a problem, they could simply adopt versions of Sonoma County’s more sensible approach (which simply bans non-resident or outside/corporate ownership of short-term rentals) or even Fort Bragg’s only-in-certain-areas approach.
There’s more to the problem than just the fact that short term rentals take housing stock off the market in favor of high-profit de facto rural motel businesses.
Navarro resident Don Shanley explained during public expression on Tuesday that having someone or a commercial real estate outfit buy a house and then open an unmanaged commercial motel business next door on a rural private road can create major neighborhood problems. (Shanley’s comments can be found in Valley People.)
Perhaps the most terrifying part of Tuesday’s discussion, to anyone needing housing in Mendocino County anyway, was Williams’ final declaration that these Supervisors are going to take up the housing shortage problem sometime later this year.
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