Dining Tables and the Water Table

Michelle Blackwell

September 15, 2023 — Over one hundred residents packed the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday to support outdoor dining and the retention of the tents that many restaurants and bars constructed to provide social distancing during the pandemic. The tents were allowed due to the state’s public health emergency status. Now that the state’s emergency has expired there has been an effort to pressure the restaurants to remove the tents. Supervisor Williams asked the board to extend the tents use for one year to consider both the lack of a reliable water source and the historic aspect of the village of Mendocino.

Multiple restaurants stood up and spoke about the impacts of the pandemic on their business and the effort required to stay open and keep people employed. As well as their efforts to save water.

Still, the support was not unanimous. Several residents also spoke about dry wells and the specter of wildfire as reasons for being conservative with the water table. The Board of Supervisors granted the one-year extension. But the real work is yet to be done. Water is a shared resource and that includes both human use and the natural environment. It will be up to local government and the community to ensure that they can have both outdoor dining tables and a healthy water table.