Julie McCloskey: Quiet Title Your Groundwater Rights

AENN

WHO I AM

• Overlying landowner in the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin.

• I went to court (along with hundreds of other overlying landowners) and quiet-titled my groundwater rights.

• Case: Steinbeck / Protect Our Water Rights (POWR).

THE WIN

• On all counts we won.

• That win did not come from politics.

• It came from the California Constitution already on the books.

THE TWO SENTENCES THAT WON IT

• Article I, Section 1 — property sits with life and liberty.

• Article X, Section 2 — reasonable beneficial use of water. Self-executing.

• Without those two sentences, there is no win to stand on.

WHAT MUST NOT BE LOST

• Our land is inside the New California state map.

• Any new constitution has to keep those two protections — in force, not in spirit.

• I still need the actual draft language (you mentioned a copy of Ohio constitution)

TWO DIFFERENT WATERS

• Native groundwater under our land is not State Water Project water.

• Our basin has never been mixed with State Water Project water.

• The court quiet-titled our rights. It did not adjudicate the whole basin (unfortunately in my opinion).

• That gap leaves the door open for outside water — especially SWP water — to dilute our rights over time.

• Mix them and you can no longer tell who owns what – this is actually a Water Purveyor (seller of water) strategy to tax and encumber landowners with capital projects (see attached SemiTropic Water District Slide).

FALSE PAPER WATER

• State Water Project claims are at least double the real supply (see Planning & Conservation League v. Department of Water Resources (2000) 83 Cal.App.4th 892, 908 fn. 5) – and I have talked with C-Win their research actually showed it is more like 5-7x overcommitted but the court did not do the extra analysis from what was explained to me.

• A court already called the extra “paper water.” Not wet water.

• You cannot finance a dam, a canal, or a new project on water that does not exist.

**see attached Semitropic Water District slide that shows clearly that over time they claim all the ground water is going away and that thy State Water Project is taking its place thereby eroding overlying basin landowners water rights.  See also attached an article showing what happened to Calleguas Water District.

WHO PAYS

• Taxpayers and ratepayers are asked to pay for future projects based on a lie.

• Those projects are not properly financed if the water is false.

• From what you explained at the town hall many interests are lining up at your door to influence the New California Constitution but those interests did not win our fight – we did and I am very concerned those interests might not be in alignment with the protection of property rights..

THE RISK

Without the same — or stronger — protection of overlying groundwater rights written into the New California constitution, well-financed interests can change the law later and erase what we won in court. The money and power behind State Water Project contractors and private water brokers is that large. Landowners should not have to spend 13 years in court to quiet title, then watch the constitution that produced the win get swapped out and be told to defend the same property right in a political process. I am concerned that a new California constitution is being drafted now, and that the people writing it do not understand overlying landowner water rights — or the interests that want those rights gone. The United States Constitution does not create property. It assumes it — and then forbids the government from taking it without due process and just compensation. California’s Constitution goes further: Article I, Section 1 lists “acquiring, possessing, and protecting property” as an inalienable right, in the same sentence as life and liberty.

That is why overlying groundwater could be quiet-titled. It is treated as property, not as a permit the state could revise when the politics changed.

CONCLUSION

The Water within the State Water Project must be counted with DOGE.

Overlying Basin landowners overlying rights must be protected and taxpayers must not pay for future projects financed on false water.