The agency is currently funded by its members, each of which pay $68,750 per year, plus $30,000 in FY 2025 to fund the fee study. The four members are the County of Mendocino, the City of Ukiah, the Russian River Flood Control Water Conservation and Improvement District, and the Upper Russian River Water Agency. There is also one seat each for agricultural and tribal interests.
The yearly budget for the agency is $600,000. Administrative functions and developing the groundwater sustainability plan were funded by a grant from the state Department of Water Resources. The fees will be collected with property tax bills, unless the owner doesn’t get one. In that case, the agency will bill the owner directly. Federal lands and tribal properties are exempt. There is also an appeals process. A representative of the Yokayo tribe, which is not federally recognized and which serves 75 water users, told the agency board that the community is disadvantaged and working on getting federal recognition. The board asked him to write a letter to that effect and signaled that they were receptive to the idea of exempting the tribe from the fees.
The fee structure has two components. One is an annual fee of $4 per acre, which all property owners in the basin are supposed to pay. That’s to cover administrative costs, or 23% of the agency’s budget. The second component is broken into four groups, or categories of water users.
People using public water systems will be charged a little over one cent per thousand gallons extracted. Their water service provider will receive the bill on their behalf and likely pass it on to them.
Crop land will be charged $32.75 per acre. That includes cannabis, which is capped at one acre. According to the fee study, “Properties with small cultivation licenses were not included in the fee study because water use in the maximum allowable canopy (of a small cultivation license) is similar to that of having a vegetable garden, or a second home on the property.” Of the 50 properties in the county with at least one valid cannabis license, 27 of them are considered cropland according to the department of water resources.
According to the fee study, there are 18,550 acres of cropped land in the Ukiah Valley groundwater basin. Over 15,000 acres of that is vineyard. According to the last crop report, which was in 2021, agriculture generated $200 million that year. Just under $84.5 million was from grapes, followed by forest products at $67.1 million. Mendocino County ranks 35th out of 58 counties in the state in terms of agricultural production value. Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting are responsible for 2% of the jobs in the Ukiah Valley and 6% of the jobs in the county overall. Crop land in the Ukiah Valley basin uses 67% of the extracted groundwater, while public water systems use 31%.
A third group that will be assessed consists of improved property that is neither crop land nor served by a public water system. This group will be charged $34.67 per acre per year. Residential properties in this group will be capped at half an acre.
Ukiah City Council member Doug Crane said he’s “not a fan of how much of the fees fall on agriculture.” He characterized the fees as part of “a mandated regulatory burden. It has nothing to do with how much water anybody actually uses, or where it came from. We’re saddled with this obligation no matter what.” Noting that a typical residential parcel would pay pennies for groundwater, he suggested that there is room for more of a regulatory cost to fall on non-ag water users.”
Adam Gaska, representing the Farm Bureau, agreed in part, but said, “There is a basis in the methodology, and it goes back to our own groundwater sustainability plan…That is our best testimony for now: that agriculture use and roughly two-thirds of the groundwater;” though he suspects that more data will show that the amount is “probably overestimated.” If the agency board makes another sector pay more of the fee burden, he added, “All we would end up doing is shifting the cost to somebody else. We’re still saddled with the cost as a greater community.”
The fees can be adjusted, with proper notice and hearings, once a year because they are attached to the property tax bill. Supervisor Glenn McGourty, representing the county, said he thought the newly adopted fee structure is a good place to start. “We know it's not perfect but we have to get the mechanism in place,” he told his colleagues, addin that, “We’re fortunate to be in a place where our groundwater seems to be sustainable.”