Dining Tables and the Water Table
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.\xa0 The tents were allowed due to the state\u2019s public health emergency status.\xa0 Now that the state\u2019s emergency has expired there has been an effort to pressure the restaurants to remove the tents.\xa0 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.\xa0 As well as their efforts to save water.\xa0
Still, the support was not unanimous.\xa0 Several residents also spoke about dry wells and the specter of wildfire as reasons for being conservative with the water table. \xa0
The Board of Supervisors granted the one-year extension.\xa0 But the real work is yet to be done.\xa0 Water is a shared resource and that includes both human use and the natural environment.\xa0 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.