In an amazing outpouring of community effort, volunteers collected over 2000 petition signatures to get an important ground water initiative on the November ballot. This was well over the 1362 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. The petition, titled the Siskiyou Headwaters Initiative, was ”prepared for the purpose of amending the Siskiyou County Groundwater Management Code (ordinance) to apply ground water extraction permit requirements to the entire County (not only designated groundwater basins) and remove the exemption that enables the water bottling industry to extract and export unlimited amounts of water from Siskiyou County without a permit.” Under requirements of California environmental law (CEQA), a level of environmental review will be necessary in order to obtain Conditional Use Permits.   If approved by the voters in November, this initiative will overturn a late 1990’s amendment to the Siskiyou County groundwater ordinance exempting the water bottling industry from the permitting processes 

  Dozens of volunteers spread out through the County getting signatures, talking about water issues in our area and even registering voters so they could sign the petition. Good work everyone!  The Board of Supervisors will review this initiative at their meeting scheduled for July 12, 2015 and could vote to implement the initiative directly.

WATER receives a $3000 Grant to continue our work!

We are pleased to announce that WATER has received a $3000 grant from the Patricia L. Kimball and David T. Kimball Fund of the Shasta Regional Community Foundation. This generous donation was made possible at the request of the directors of the Kimball Fund who wished to support our work in protecting the environment and responsible development in Siskiyou County. This is especially important as we begin (again!) the CEQA/EIR process around the Crystal Geyser plant

Crystal Geyser EIR inches forward.

The County has told us they have selected a consulting firm to prepare the Environmental Impact Report for the Crystal Geyser plant.  We anticipate the County will open an escrow fund (funded by CG) for expenses of the EIR, which we assume will include all County costs to administer the EIR as well as the consultant fees.  We will continue to monitor this. If indeed a full Environmental Impact Report is to be prepared, a Scoping Meeting will be held and the public and agencies provided a project description.  Comments received at that meeting and afterwards, will then be part of the review processes.  Stay tuned and get ready to participate in this process. We expect it all to begin in earnest later this summer.