by Kit Stolz
On the last day of February this year, the meeting room at Casitas Municipal Water District in Oak View was filled to capacity, with dozens of residents and local officials buzzing in anticipation of a new proposal — dubbed the “Three Sisters” plan — to be offered to connect Lake Casitas with the State Water Project.
If implemented, this would be the first time in the history of the region that Ojai — and Casitas which supplies the town and the west side of Ventura with water — has moved to connect its water supply to the rest of California.
Lake Casitas, a reservoir that collects rain and snow from a mountainous watershed well over 200 miles square, supplies approximately 67,000 farmers and residents in Ojai and western Ventura with water. Since the recent drought took hold in 2012 in Ventura County, and became “extreme” in 2016, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, water levels in aquifers and in the reservoir have fallen rapidly. Despite conservation efforts by farmers and residents over the last four years, the lake has fallen to just over one-third of capacity. Water levels in the aquifers of the Ojai Basin, from which farmers pump water for their citrus orchards, are at their lowest levels since 1964, according to the latest report available from the Ojai Basin Groundwater Management Agency. Growers, realtors, businesses, elected officials and citizens in Ojai repeatedly express alarm about the prospect of running dry.
Continue reading “Why Ojai is moving towards state water in April 2018”