Posted on 07/20/2022 1:44:11 PM PDT by Former Proud Canadian
..."one of the oldest conceptions in the western world: What’s on your land belongs to you. This idea predates the founding of America. If you find gold in your backyard, that resource belongs to you.
...
A source near San Diego has shared with California Globe a shocking letter that’s quietly being delivered to owners of private wells.
The letter is signed by Natalie Stork, the Chief of Groundwater Management Program Unit 1, and was sent in late July on the letterhead of California Water Boards, under the authority of Gov. Newsom and Jared Blumenfeld, Secretary for Environmental Protection. Buried beneath the bureaucratic acronyms GSA and SGMA (Groundwater Sustainability Agency and Sustainable Groundwater Management Act) is an extremely aggressive conception of government authority and its dominion over private property.
The letter reads, “Landowners whose property is within an unmanaged area and contains an operating ground water extraction well must report the volume of groundwater extracted from the well. The groundwater extraction volume must be reported as a monthly total. In addition to pumping volumes, reports must include the location of the well and the place and purpose of use of the groundwater. Groundwater extraction reports are not due to the state water board until February 1, 2023. However, if you are required to report, the report must include pumping volumes for each month between the date of receipt of this letter and September 30, 2022.”
There are fees, of course. The base filing fee is $300 per well, which all extractors are required to report. Then there’s an additional fee of $10 per acre foot with a meter, $25 per acre foot without. Tardy filers face a late fee of 25% per month.
(Excerpt) Read more at californiaglobe.com ...
Take a bow, Gov Newsom!
The only problem with this, like so many things in California, is that it will drive liberal voters into neighboring states and turn them into sh___holes just like California.
acre foot = 1233 cubit meters of water.
I used to have a 5 acre rural home. That I read this this requirement wouldn’t pertain because we surely used less than 2 acre feet… though we had no way of measuring our use. However I’m confident that it due course they’ll get around to residential wells
Follow da money! Not only a land grab, but a money grab! Somebody's starving for more revenue.
Well, it’s just an anecdote, but I just met a recent San Francisco transplant here in Pensacola, and he’s not a Cali stereotype. A military vet, he’s been a lifelong Republican who finally just gave up on SF.
In Pennsylvania private wells are subject to the same restrictions as public water lines during a “drought emergency”; ie, no hose car washing, no lawn watering.
Been that way for at least half a century.
I support allodial title. No property tax. Not subject to eminent domain. If you own the land, you ought to actually own the land.
Under our current system we just pretend to own land until the government decides to take it.
In several desert states a land owner does not own any water beneath his lot. My oldest daughter had an acre with an adobe on it near Hurley NM. It was the only green acre for many miles around. The neighbors were all indigenous Spanish and thought she was a bruja, a witch because she had grass and trees and bushes. Truth is an underground stream that came from Geronimo Mountain a few miles from her went very deep but came up in a sort of loop under her acre. She had a “tool shed” in the floor of which water was only a couple of feet down and she had subsurface piping around on the property that watered the plant life. She encouraged the bruja perception because it kept people from reporting her water to the State which she feared would have taken control of it.
Tyranny of government starts small then becomes a terminal cancer for the present government. Seems to me we are about 2/3 of the way to Socialism.
It may not just be a money and land grab.
It might also be a way to coerce property owners into hooking up to public water systems.
325,851 gallons of water==acre foot.
Groundwater is “feral” but so is oil. Water no more belongs to government than does your oil.
Out of control government is out of control.
oh, thanks.
So I’ve seen these giant wells that just shoot a massive amount of water into a field in Arkansas. And then I’ve seen a small well in the back of my Grandparents house in Louisiana that rarely gets used. And it makes me wonder is this directed primarily at agricultural wells? Or does everyone with a well have to comply.
In my grandparents case, there is no meter, so we’’d have to estimate less than 5 gallons a year.
I know there are well laws in Tennessee. I don’t think you can drill new wells. And I think you have to have permits for existing wells. I don’t know about fees. But I think you are required to have them tested periodically for contamination.
>> The Beverly Hillbillies’ transformation into instant millionaires illustrates one of the oldest conceptions in the western world: What’s on your land belongs to you. This idea predates the founding of America. If you find gold in your backyard, that resource belongs to you.
>> California wants to change that. <<
This would be nice, but it’s not at all true. Water rights, mining rights, usage rights, zoning laws... there’s nothing at all new to the notion that there are limits to the meaning of land ownership.
Klaus , “you’ll own nothing and be happy”
“The meek shall inherit the earth. But not the mineral rights.”
— J. Paul Getty
My wife and I agree with you.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.