By Don A. Wright
The Triangle T Water District held its board of directors meeting on Thursday, February 13, 2025 and on Zoom. They met in Chowchilla and I attended online. Couple of other folks were online as well. The Zoom showed documentation but not a live shot of the room where the meeting was taking place. I have no reason to doubt there was a quorum of directors and things moved right along.
The GSA Meeting
The meeting was called to order, the first part was the Triangle T Water District Groundwater Sustainability Agency meeting. That started at 2:00pm. A gentleman named Clay (Issacs?) thanked the board for their hard work and helping him continue to farm. Clay said he built an extra large recharge basin because he was trying to keep as much of his land equity as possible. It covers more than 10 percent of his farmable land. He said he’s not sure if there will ever be a pipe to his property. His home ranch is outside of TTWD but is in the GSA, if I understood, and he wants to move some credits to his home place.
I believe it was Chase Hurley who said this might be something possible in the future but as of yet TTWDGSA hasn’t gotten that far along. Someone else (President Lucas Avila?) thanked Clay for his forward looking actions. He said there are still some things to work out and they are waiting to see what happens to the subbasin down south as they go through the SGMA probation process. Sarah Woolf added the grant money received has to be spent on the approved projects but there is a Multi-benefit Land Repurposing Program application for grants open at this time.
The minutes were approved and Woolf reported the subbasin coordination meeting is next month. Following that the Groundwater Sustainability Plan will be resubmitted to the State Water Resources Control Board and hopefully passed on to the Department of Water Resources. She said there was a webinar workshop on the GSP and the public comment period is open for a while longer. That was the end of the GSA meeting.
The Meeting
The board meeting began immediately at 2:15pm and there were no public comments. The minutes were approved and Hurley gave the budget report. They have $461,000 in cash at the moment and the books are ready for an auditor to look through. I doubt a Musk audit will be necessary, this is a group of farmers keeping an eye on the books after all, and the board approved.
Woolf asked the board to approve a delinquency policy. As TTWD grows more situations arise and although the delinquency rate is low the district has to be in compliance with state law. A water district is a political subdivision of the State of California but it has some discretion in setting policy.
The discussion ranged hither and yon but mostly the board was willing to work with folks bringing reasonable reasons and good will to the table. The results can be serious, a district could issue a lien and take over the property but that is always a course of the very last resort. They settled on 180 day grace period before the brass knuckles come out.
Water Ops
Next Hurley said they have 10,500 a/f of surface water set aside to come into the district as of now. There have been no deliveries to date this year. There are a series of wheeling agreements to bring this water into the district. The board was asked to enter into an agreement with Central California Irrigation District and that was unchanged since last year. The board agreed and also agreed to very similar agreement with Columbia Canal Company.
Woolf reported Chowchilla Water District may have 2,000 a/f for an exchange agreement for some water already in surface storage. There is a concern that water could be lost due to storms coming in. There could be a flood release and that water could be lost if they don’t pay now to reserve it for TTWD’s use. The board approved the agreement.
Closed Session All of a Sudden
Next thing I know the meeting went into closed session but I was still in the zoom meeting. Thankfully that didn’t last long and before I could say anything they kicked me out. I’ve been in closed sessions and believe me they are not an anything goes free for all, like the public restrooms in Target. Don’t get me wrong, I’m interested in the legal issues and I believe the Brown Act is a very good thing – but most of the time you’re not getting any juicy details about some court case strategy. You’re hearing about an item that may be more boring than even an auditor’s report.
The agenda listed one item of Significant Exposure to Litigation. The agenda also placed the closed session as the last item, after all the public matters had been concluded. And that is how it should be. A public meeting should be held for the purpose of the public to attend. I’ve seen and you probably have too, many meetings that begin in closed session. Let’s say it’s scheduled to start at 10:00am with closed session. Sometimes a closed
session can run a couple hours or more. So, what is a member of the public supposed to do in the meantime? Sit in the lobby twiddling their thumbs or hang out online padding reports with opinions on proper public meeting scheduling decorum?
Now sometimes it can’t be helped. You may be aware in most cases attorneys are on the clock. They’re not billing piece work or salaries – it’s by the hour or a fraction of the hour. As a board you’re handling public funds and have responsibility to do so with as little waste as possible unless you’re an NGO on USAID; which TTWD most assuredly is not. Back to my point, the attorney has been booked for the end of the public session, but a conflict has arisen. Sometimes you have go into closed session when you can get all the necessary cats in the same room at the same time and that might not be convenient for the public.
Another scenario is the order of the items. Under the Ralph M. Brown Act a public agency can go into closed session for matters pertaining to real property, personnel or litigation. Suppose there’s one of those three item types on the agenda that seriously shouldn’t be voted on until a legal opinion is given to the board. You might better go into closed session and get that legal opinion before you vote. That would be prudent.
At 3:05pm the open session resumed. There was no reportable action taken.
Subsidence
The reason Triangle T Water District was born was subsidence. The old Triangle T Ranch
was unspoiled grazing land, one of the last large acreage areas of pre-Columbian habitat left in the San Joaquin Valley. John Hancock Insurance bought it and planted almonds wall to wall. They had little to no surface water available and sunk wells. One day they found subsidence was taking place at an alarming rate. This was harming the surrounding farms, wells and infrastructure. The Exchange Contractors came to the rescue with the possibility of some surplus surface supply for sale. The surrounding growers knew they needed to form a Water District to become eligible for
these possible supplies and a better chance of protection from governmentally imposed procedures needed to prevent complete devastation due to SGMA.
Woolf reported there is a meeting coming up with the State Board on TTWD’s application for water rights on some flood waters that come down the Chowchilla Bypass. The Governor’s recent executive orders indicate this would be in line with TTWD’s efforts.
However, the State Board isn’t holding up its end of the load. The State Board is trying to force TTWD to do all the minutia of through Delta flows with Fish & Wildlife and a myriad of other details. This might make the State Board appear to be doing something – it isn’t and it leaves TTWD unsure of what to do. There’s a good chance of some big flows coming
through a part of the state – the part TTWD is in – that desperately needs surface water to recharge to prevent onerous SGMA cutbacks and further subsidence. The good news is TTWD’s attorney will now be having a talk with the State Board.
Woolf reported she will be meeting with the Flood Board tomorrow so the district will be able to remove all doubt about when a flood is actually taking place. The State Board is asking for very unreasonable measures to be taken by TTWD regarding flood flow measurements.
Ultimately there has to be a permit from the state for TTWD to use any flood water that might have been recharged. They could wind up with water underground in the area they can’t use. Woolf said since SGMA the State Board Staff created a “streamlined” permitting process that no one wants to use because it doesn’t work for most applications under SGMA. It’s rumored staff is miffed into snit like proportions with a rhinologist engaged just to put noses back into joint over the widespread rejection by the public taxpayers it serves of its version of streamlining.
Other Business/Board Comments
There will be a Red Top Landowners meeting coming up. Someone commented while Trump’s new approach to California water may be very helpful on the federal side – things coming from the Governor’s desk may not improve. Trump is working to loosen up Delta exports through the USBR. That happened last time he was in office and there could be more benefits realized from what is coming soon. I’ve noticed Newsom on occasion can be a pragmatic politician and lately he has toned down his rhetoric and made a couple of moves such an executive order to retain flood flows and he stated he’ll veto a bill that would prevent the state prison system from working with the feds whenever an illegal alien convict is released.
And that was that. The next meeting will be March 13th. Go be good to each other and yourself.
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Triangle T Water District – http://triangletwaterdistrict.org/
4400 Hays Drive, Chowchilla, CA 93610 There is no staff, email address or phone number listed on the website.
Board – Lucas Avila – President, Dirk Vlot – Vice President, Maryse Suppiger, Michael York & Jose Ochoa
Staff – Sarah Woolf & Chase Hurley management, Jeane – Attorney
The Triangle T Water District GSA is in the Chowchilla Sub Basin DWR # 5-022.05
