California Targets Private Property With Latest Water Well Fees, Charges: Report

[Dftodd]

I have maybe 2 acres of lawn. None of it has been watered in well over 15 years, other than a few small sections that were reseeded after some digging. It's all green as can be and needs mowing every week or so unless we get into a dry spell.

There is absolutely NO way I would pay for water to spray on a lawn, even if it was just electric to run a well.

I was in town yesterday for the first time in weeks. I passed two homes with sprinklers running. From the spray pattern, all of the heads looked like normal heads that should be rotating. Not a single one of them was out of 40 or more ... not one. Water was just flowing out into the street and down the drains.

I always let my yard creep up the closer we got to dry season. It would stay green longer that way.

Really dry years I would have to just run around and knock down the few areas where it was wet. The rest would turn brown and go dormant. Once the rain kicked back in, I would drop the deck and cut it short again.

 

[MossRoad]

Water comes up and used for shower, washer, dishes, toilet, etc, then goes back in the ground via septic system. I'm putting it back after use.

That’s how it works here, but other places the wells are in a deeper aquifer than the septic returns it to. The ‘good’ water is way down there, and doesn’t get replenished by ground water in many places.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Imagine being charged to pump water from your own well.

California Targets Private Property With Latest Water Well Fees, Charges: Report | The Daily Wire

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Image living in CA!

 

[MossRoad]

That water most likely evaporates as almost all water we use does. Very little of it goes back to usable source like waterways or aquifers. Somebody upthread mentioned a term in thousands of years for aquifers to replenish.

Not here. It’s all sand. Anything you use that goes down your drain goes back into the same aquifer that it was drawn out of. The only thing that evaporates is some of the water that goes on the lawn or flowers.

 

[ponytug]

Water rights vary enormously across the world, and especially across the US. California's water rights are a complex mixture of environmental, historic, irrigation, mining, and domestic use laws.

I wouldn't presume to assert that water rights are "X". All I know is that it is more complicated than I understand and that details matter. Water rights are complex and going to get more complex as more groundwater gets contaminated, or is found to be contaminated. Arsenic, chlorinated organics, herbicides, PFAS, nitrates, radon, uranium are just a few of the concerns. Statistically speaking across the US something like a third or half of private wells have contamination issues.

Locally, I researched carefully the water rights and aquifer for this particular property before buying. Many of the other properties that we looked at had significant issues with their wells and water. One property under an estate sale had exceptional manganese levels in the well water; the father and son had died of heart attacks within several weeks of each other. I'm not saying that the manganese was the cause, but it is known to cardiac toxicity.

TL;DR The California law above is an attempt to preserve groundwater and water quality for future generations.

All the best,

Peter

 

[MossRoad]

Here they do. So, I live here.

If I were you, I’d look up riparian water rights in Arkansas. The water under your land doesn’t belong to you. You can use it for most reasonable purposes, but if it effects your neighbor in a detrimental way, they have legal avenues to stop you.

It’s the same way with being on a lake with other property owners. You can use the water. You can take some for some purposes. You can’t suck all the water out of the lake just because your property abuts part of it.

The water underground is considered the same as a surface lake in your state.

https://static.ark.org/eeuploads/anrc/arkansas_water_law_2011_draft-new.pdf

 

[ROUSTABOUT]

And your neighbor sucks out a few million gallons, your well goes dry, but it’s not you neighbor’s fault, right?

Are they sucking oil out from under me now? I can drill a deeper water well. Get down in that Sparta sand. Nobody can mess with me then. I can build a cistern and run my gutters to it. Build a land reservoir. Because I choose to live out and rural does not mean I have to supply them packed up folk in town.

 

[ROUSTABOUT]

If I were you, I’d look up riparian water rights in Arkansas. The water under your land doesn’t belong to you. You can use it for most reasonable purposes, but if it effects your neighbor in a detrimental way, they have legal avenues to stop you.

It’s the same way with being on a lake with other property owners. You can use the water. You can take some for some purposes. You can’t suck all the water out of the lake just because your property abuts part of it.

The water underground is considered the same as a surface lake in your state.

https://static.ark.org/eeuploads/anrc/arkansas_water_law_2011_draft-new.pdf

If I need a well, I put a well in. I put it in myself. I don't call anyone else.

 

[MossRoad]

…In Texas, the water is owned by the landowner, which was a decision in the Texas Supreme court a decade or so back.

…

It doesn’t say the land owner owns the water. It says they can pump as much as they need in most situations, so long as it’s not wasted or intentionally meant to drain the neighbor. In a nutshell, the deepest, most powerful wells can suck the neighbors dry as long as it’s being put to good use.

However, there are some exceptions to that in the document you linked to.

 

[MossRoad]

If I need a well, I put a well in. I put it in myself. I don't call anyone else.

No one said you can’t. But you don’t own the water under you land in your state. That’s a fact.