Los Angeles County Considers New ‘Hauling Water' Initiative

Los Angeles county is considering a “controversial plan” to jumpstart housing development in rural areas by allowing property owners to bring in their own sources of drinking water if no others can be found.

According to the Los Angeles Times, if the plan is adopted the initiative would make 42,677 parcels in the northern one-third of the county potentially eligible to construct as many as 3,680 single-family homes over the next two decades.

The proposal aims to allow for “hauling water for construction” of new homes despite a 2003 California Department of Public Health determination that hauled water does not provide the equivalent level of health protection and reliability as a permitted public water system or certified private well.

Since then, the Los Angeles Times reported that building permits have not been issued for single-family residences on north county parcels unless the developers can tap groundwater or a public or private water supply.

All of the parcels that would be affected are in county Supervisor Michael Antonovich’s 5th District and include areas northeast of the city of Santa Clarita; Mojave high desert areas north and east of the San Gabriel Mountains in Antelope Valley.

Antonovich said the proposal is the result of years of working with the community, local town councils and residents.

From 2010 to 2012, at the direction of the Board of Supervisors, the Hauled Water Task Force presented the informational report’s conclusions at a series of community meetings and met with community members to discuss their concerns.

Based on community input and consideration of other potential impacts, the Task Force revised the informational report and several of its recommendations.

The Los Angeles Times reported that critics of the plan point out that the draft environmental impact report for the initiative is based on data gathered in 2010, a year before the start of the ongoing five-year drought, which included the driest four-year stretch recorded in California.

Dale Sakamoto, a spokesman for the initiative and a civil engineer with the county Department of Public Works, said that “plans supporting this initiative are admittedly outdated.”

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is expected to make a final decision in November.

Opponents include Dan Silver, executive director of the nonprofit Endangered Habitats League, described the proposal as “so wrongheaded and dangerous it defies belief.”

“My big question,” Silver said, “is this: Why is the county spending time and money to produce thousands of pages of environmental analysis if there’s not enough water to haul to new homes up there in the first place?”

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