Hi there.  Well, today is July 10, 2017 and the OFFICIAL WATER SERVICE AREA is still a mystery.

Personally I sill cannot believe that with all the touted “research and study” of the various issues concerning the LAKE DON PEDRO COMMUNITY SERVICES DISTRICT formation and operation,

the primary OPERATING REGULATION OF OUR DISTRICT WAS COMPLETELY IGNORED BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES!   (ie, the Counties of Tuolumne and Mariposa and their respective Planning Departments and LAFCOs (Local Agency Formation Commissions).

Seriously.  What am I missing here?  

None of this makes sense except for the EVIDENCE POINTING to the REASONABLE CONCLUSION THAT THE LDPCSD was initially, and intentionally, designed and put into operation not to just furnish the subdivision with water as always intended by Boise Cascade, but to MORE IMPORTANTLY also provide a

SPECIAL BENEFIT WATER SERVICE to land developers and real estate interests OUTSIDE THE STATE APPROVED AREAS FOR MERCED RIVER WATER DIVERSION AND USE while placing that primary financial responsibility on the innocent MERCED RIVER WATER ENTITLED CUSTOMERS of the Lake Don Pedro residential subdivision.

Yes, the thousands of <MR WECs> of the subdivision were essentially sacrificed for a diabolical “third party land development scheme”.

And in my mind constitutes pure fraud.

Even the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) decision on January 21, 1981 – (when it approved the transfer of SIERRA HIGHLANDS WATER COMPANY FACILITIES AND ASSETS to the August 1980 newly formed LDPCSD) clearly documented what the district water service area was to be and what customer accounts would be transferred and assumed by the new LAFCO created LDPCSD.

[That decision ALSO POINTED OUT WHAT WAS NOT TO BE TRANSFERRED AND ASSUMED BY THE LDPCSD – water service proposals and “sweetheart deal” line extensions and other projects which would still belong entirely to the former SIERRA HIGHLANDS as their sole liabilities – and were not to be assumed by the new LDPCSD!  Yet LAFCO apparently saddled the new district with just such liabilities never-the-less – AND PRIOR TO THE WATER FACILITIES EVEN BEING LEGALLY TRANSFERRED TO THE LDPCSD!  seriously.]

Yes it appears the Mariposa County LAFCO had apparently already “expanded that water service area” in AUGUST of 1980 based on an 11 page “metes and bounds” detailed engineer’s field survey,  yet ….

that EXTREMELY IMPORTANT SERVICE AREA MAP, created from that LAFCO commissioned detailed survey, mysteriously disappeared from multiple locations shortly after the district BECAME A PUBLIC AGENCY and was officially under the control of Mariposa County as the lead LAFCO agency.   (Tuolumne County, Mariposa County and of course, the LDPCSD,  all had apparently “lost the original map” shortly after the LDPCSD came into existence and a new map HAS NEVER BEEN CREATED FROM THAT STILL EXISTING SURVEY despite multiple requests through the decades.  – EXTREMELY CURIOUS that LAFCO REFUSES TO CONFIRM WHAT THEY APPARENTLY APPROVED IN 1980 before the CPUC transfer decision.)

I still believe this “missing map” is THE MAJOR CLUE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY in understanding exactly what happened before, during, and after the district’s creation by these local authorities.

The conclusion seems inescapable that the LDPCSD was intended to serve MERCED RIVER WATER anywhere the counties ANNEXED PROPERTY INTO ITS SERVICE AREA despite clear state regulations regarding the legal PLACE OF USE for MERCED RIVER WATER which was basically the Lake Don Pedro subdivision and the golf course.

Unfortunately it certainly appears as though the

MR WECs of the subdivision,

have from the very beginning, merely been used to conceal and create a massive “foothill water empire” (at least on paper) with which to develop thousands of acres around the actual STATE APPROVED MERCED RIVER WATER entitled subdivision.

Simply put

LAND DEVELOPERS DID NOT WANT APPROVED SUBDIVISION LAND WITH MERCED RIVER WATER

THEY WANTED SUBDIVISION MERCED RIVER WATER ON THEIR UNAPPROVED OUTSIDE PLACE OF USE LAND

 

(and the thousands of MR WECs of the subdivision have been paying the related costs for decades.)

 

ANWYAY, read this “detailed report” advocating further district service expansion for yourself (page controls at the bottom left of the document) and ask:

“WHY WASN’T THE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ISSUE OF WHERE

MERCED RIVER WATER

COULD LEGALLY BE USED

NOT ADDRESSED IN THIS REPORT?”

My best to you and yours, Lew

 

1987 LDPCSD SOI Report Final