UPDATE: Monday, MARCH  7th, 2016   LEW HERE!  Some storm the other night huh?  We sure need more rain but I could do without the high winds!  lol

LINE EXTENSIONS? * INCREASED LOAN AMOUNTS? * 900+ acre ANNEXATIONS?

and then quite humorously –

NO CREDIT CARD IF WE ARE TO BE PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE! 

  LOL

 

 

CAN YOU IMAGINE THE ENVIRONMENT BACK THEN AFTER THE DISTRICT WAS FORMED IN AUGUST 1980? 

The panic that regulations might be more strenuously enforced by this new public agency that was no longer just a private concern like SIERRA HIGHLANDS which may have had a little more flexibility when it came to following, among other things, State of California Water License restrictions.

Property owners NOT INSIDE THE LEGAL PLACE OF USE UNDER L11395 were scrambling to do any of a number of things, including but not limited to:

• immediately obtain connection, receive water and start paying LDPCSD
• have connections and/or service boxes installed (privately or by district) even though there is no water service
• have property annexed by respective county LAFCoa
• sign up for “availability fee payments” ($60/ac   MAX 3 acres or $180/yr — SO…whether a three (3) acre lot in the “small parcel sized water entitled subdivision” or, nine hundred (900) acres (as in the above annexation) the yearly fee would only be $180!    A pretty good bargain for those not entitled to Merced River water considering the thousands of acres the district was actively expanding it’s boundary to include.  All the while ignoring water license restrictions.
  • So it was a feverish race to get water service for those outside the license permitted areas that resulted in patch work maps, contradictory and/or conflicting records and many unhappy existing customers as well as angry, but hopeful, future customers.
  • Like a “shotgun start” in a golf tournament – at the sound of the blast,(District Formation)  golfers (water thirsty property owners) on every tee box on the course (all properties not entitled to water under license) begin playing (attempting various methods of obtaining water from the district).
  • SO AGAIN: Some properties were annexed but others like Director Emery Ross and his  RANCHO SANTA TERESA never were.  Some properties paid “buy-in” fees but some did not.  Some paid yearly availability fees, others did not.  Some properties never paid a thin dime yet were still included in this expanded service boundary.  Believe it or not there were a few property owners within the boundary that actually swam against the prevailing current of acquisition and protested their inclusion in the new district and tried for decades to get out.
• Land developers and real estate speculators also pushed for “WILL SERVE LETTERS”

Naturally the increased number of development projects meant more work and revenue for the respective counties.   (Looks good at budget time also.)  Planning departments, engineering details, zoning requirements, LAFCo application fees, permits, public notice requirements, inspections, revisions, approvals, committee meetings, Board of Supervisor approvals, adequate insurance, State establishment of various Tax Rate Areas,  blah, blah, blah……

…………everybody was, or was going to, make piles of money thanks to this monstrous water service district that was blossoming within two counties smack dab in the middle of these drought prone Sierra Nevada foothills.

Rather like the first gold rush but this time it was California’s Liquid Gold that speculators aggressively sought.