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b'August 8, 2022 \\u2014 The Board of Supervisors agreed in a narrow vote last week to approve the idea of a water agency. During budgeting in June, the board agreed to allocate $250,000 from the PG&E settlement to form the agency.\\n\\nAnd, to comply with a new law, SB 552, which requires drought planning, the board agreed unanimously to formalize the drought task force into a standing committee, consisting of Supervisors Glenn McGourty and John Haschak. At the moment, the Department of Transportation is in charge of water issues, but McGourty told the board that he thinks the county should create a water resources team consisting of the drought committee and county staff collaborating with experts at the U.C. Davis Cooperative Extension. Some of them, including McGourty himself, have already done water studies in Mendocino County. In 2012, McGourty led a study on ag water use in the Navarro River watershed.\\n\\nCEO Darcie Antle offered a quick calculation of how much she thinks it will cost to hire a consultant for a quarter million dollars. \\u201cIf you are going to be payin ga consultant $200 an hour for roughly a thousand hours, our staff would be required to attend the meetings as well to stay current,\\u201d she said. \\u201cI believe that happened last year, where I had Sara Pierce on most of the meetings, and also Judy Morris or Steve Dunnicliff, as well as Brent, who helped coordinate all the calls with CalOES. So for every consultant hour you\\u2019re probably looking at two or three hours of staff time\\u2026if we\\u2019re going to do the grant writing, and I don\\u2019t believe we want to pay a consultant that amount of money to help write our grants. We have another contract out for grant writing. Typically, for every grant, it\\u2019s costing us anywhere from six to ten thousand dollars per grant, so it\\u2019s going to add up quickly. I would estimate roughly, with the staffing level that we\\u2019re out, we would be doubling the amount.\\u201d\\n\\nHaschak favored another proposal, by Department of Transportation Director Howard Dashiell, to use internal staff. \\u201cI just don\\u2019t think that we need this consultant, who\\u2019s going to be working 58% of the time at $200 an hour to do these things,\\u201d he said. \\u201cI think that we can do it internally. The long term is, we need to put it out there to get a person who can learn the ropes and learn the business and provide that over a long term. Because this is a one-shot deal, and we don\\u2019t even need it.\\u201d\\n\\nBut McGourty argued that the subject matter is too complex not to bring in experts who are already connected at the state level and are alert to funding opportunities for local projects. \\u201cMr. Chairman, I\\u2019m wondering if you could pull up the MCWA implementation plan and go to page 14,\\u201d he remarked. \\u201cThere is a task list that has been identified, based on stakeholder comments. I think this might be helpful to Supervisor Haschak, about the complexity of what he\\u2019s expecting to sort of spontaneously happen.\\u201d\\n\\nSupervisor Dan Gjerde reminded the board of his position on the use of public money for water districts. \\u201cI\\u2019m not convinced of this allocation at this time,\\u201d he said. \\u201cSupervisor McGourty, I heard you say that very little has been done since the water agency was disbanded. I actually think that\\u2019s not accurate. It may accurately describe some of the inaction of some of the water districts in our county. I don\\u2019t think it accurately describes some of the action of many of our water districts in this county, during the time that the county water agency was going. And I think the unevenness of leadership by the water districts throughout the county, some failing to do their job, looking for a handout but not willing to charge their customers enough to help themselves, other water districts in the county asking their ratepayers to pay what I would say are the state rates for water so they would have the resources to solve their problems and aggressively seek state grants. You know, there\\u2019s a disparity of leadership between the different water districts in this county, and I don\\u2019t want to reward the lack of leadership by some of the water districts with county funds.\\u201d\\n\\nDevon Boer, the Executive Director of the Mendocino County Farm Bureau, invited Gjerde to a meeting to discuss the complexities. \\u201cWe do have some of our residents who live outside of an actual organized district,\\u201d she pointed out. \\u201cAnd some of the unknowns that have been discussed, such as the water hauling extraction ordinance, which is going to the Planning Commission. We\\u2019ve got the Governor\\u2019s Executive ORder N722, which is being punted over to Environmental Health\\u2026those are the questions I\\u2019ve been receiving from individuals with wells outside of districts, who are now looking at various county departments that might be providing them with various directions, lack of oversight, and perhaps not having qualifications for looking at hydrogeology\\u2026that\\u2019s been the downturn of our county, is we don\\u2019t have any sort of specific level of expertise. We\\u2019ve got different staff in different departments that get punted\\u2026it makes it complicated for the applicant, whoever they may be, to get through the process\\u2026you know, I\\u2019m not going to get into a dispute with Supervisor Gjerde. I think that what I\\u2019m going to do is work with our local water districts, and invite him to come over to a meeting.\\u201d\\n\\n\\nThe board voted 3-2, with Gjerde and Haschak dissenting, to approve the concept of working with the UC Cooperative Extension using up to $250,000, to create a water agency, contingent on a list of projects that will appear before the full board before moving forward. The list will have to be countywide, and any consultant who is hired will have to include objectives, milestones, outcomes, and staff time.\\n\\nThe drought standing committee is scheduled to meet next Monday at 9:00 am. The meeting is currently listed as the Public Health, Safety, and Resource Committee.'