A thousand homes in Santana Ranch? And probably another thousand active or pending building permits in the rest of Hollister and San Benito County? And what about Gilroy or the multiple thousands of condos and apartments being built right now in southern San Jose along Highway 85, not to mention the rest of California?
Am I the only person that’s heard California is in the fourth year of a prolonged serious and critical water shortage and there is no end in sight? I know for a fact, that for the first time in its nearly 20-year history, my little local water company’s well pumps started sucking air a few months back and had to be lowered. That tells me our water table is dropping and this is real. I also know that my blue valve water allocation has just been cut back 75 percent! And allocations to ag customers have been cut 100 percent! That’s also pretty real.
I see some neighbors letting their beautiful green lawns go brown and hear others sharing water saving actions like recycling grey water or remember “When it’s yellow, let it mellow”? Even our governor just signed a billion dollar emergency drought relief bill, although it doesn’t produce a single drop of new water. The current drought sure seems real to me. And whether you believe in global warming or not, no one, other than a few optimists with all their fingers crossed, is predicting this will get solved anytime soon.
So here we are … despite the fact that we don’t have enough water to satisfy our current demand, we are planting new homes like crazy. It appears our state and local decision-makers and planners have not gotten the memo or they know something we don’t. Do we have a drought or not? Who can we believe? Why should I “let it mellow” or rip out my lawns when our governments continue to approve new demands on our limited water supplies?
Remember how quick the state was to impose an emergency building moratorium when Hollister’s sewage treatment system couldn’t handle the demand? Why haven’t they declared a similar emergency building moratorium, statewide, until we solve this water crisis?
I believe we have a serious water drought but it appears to me that we also have a serious housing development planning drought.