For years, leaders of Rainbow and Fallbrook's Municipal Water District have been researching an alternative source of water because they say the rate hikes from San Diego County Water Authority were having a huge fit on the farmers who live in the North County communities.
"In the last five years, we've lost a million trees and over 10,000 acres simply because the growers can no longer make a profit because of the cost of water," said Hayden Hamilton from the Rainbow Municipal Water District.
The two communities proposed the idea to get their water from a source in Riverside County instead - a move that they say would save the towns more than $7 million per year. They took their proposal to LAFCO, the San Diego County Local Agency Formation, which must approve changes to governmental agency boundaries. LAFCO approved the proposal, with a 5-year detachment fee for the two towns, and the idea was then certified to be on a Nov. 7 special election ballot for voters in Fallbrook and Rainbow.
But now, Assemblymember Tasha Boerner from Encinitas proposed Assembly Bill 399 which would modify state law and call for all ratepayers in San Diego County's Water Authority to vote about whether or not Fallbrook and Rainbow would be allowed to detach.
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On Tuesday the San Diego County Board of Supervisors will be voting on whether or not they will support the Assembly Bill. The state legislature is set to vote on the bill within the next three weeks. If they approve the bill and Governor Newsom signs it into law, another election would be called to decide the potential detachment.
"We've been playing by the rules from the get-go. The law says this you have to, you know, do A, then B, then C, then D and that's what Fallbrook and Rainbow have done," said Hamilton."I call it bully politics."
Nick Serrano, a board member of the San Diego County Water Authority and Deputy Chief of Staff to San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said if Fallbrook and Rainbow detach from the water authority, the rest of the ratepayers in the county could see their bills increase as much as 5% per year.
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"I think it's stunning that there is an argument to not allow people to vote, that people do not deserve a say in this matter and we just disagree with that," Serrano said. "I think at the very least, we believe that the ratepayers, who will be impacted by this decision, should have the opportunity to vote. It's not to say that detachment can't occur, but they have the opportunity to vote."
In a statement to NBC 7, Assemblymember Boerner said:
“I authored AB 399 as a good governance bill to give ratepayers a voice in decisions that impact the cost of one of their most basic needs: water. Having separate rules for changes to a city versus a water district is unacceptable when the impact is felt by the people in either case. ‘No taxation without representation,’ was fundamental to our founding as a nation, why would we ignore that principle now? As it stands, if Rainbow and Fallbrook Water Districts leave the San Diego County Water Authority, each and every household in the remaining parts of the County could see their water bills increase by more than a dollar a month. The answer is simple, let the voters decide.”
