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Crisis Management
The village with no government meets stage 4 drought By JUDE STRIEBY | The Municipal
In many areas of the United States, water shortage isn’t often thought about. Extreme drought is a thing that’s rare and usually only lasts at most a few seasons, and the norm is an abundance of water. But in the West, drought is not occasional; it sometimes seems to be the normal state of things. California has been no stranger to droughts, as its weather patterns cycle from years of abundant precipitation to years of extremely dry weather. Mendocino, Calif., is a village on the coast that has been particularly affected. Mendocino began as a logging town in 1852, home to the Mendocino Lumber Company, which logged the redwood forests for 50 years. It was the primary source of wood used to build the entire city of San Francisco and rebuild it after the great earthquake and fires of 1906. Because of its isolated location, the population of the village declined and the economy shrank until the 1950s when Bill Zacha founded the Mendocino Art Center, making the village a popular artist colony. Surprisingly, Mendocino is one U.S. village without a government. “We have to call the county to get potholes filled,” Sandy Schmidt of the Mendocino 44 THE MUNICIPAL | JANUARY 2022
Volunteer Fire Department explained. “A lot of people moved into this area in the ’60s and ’70s with the back to the earth movement. They wanted to get off the grid, away from civilization, and there’s still sort of that attitude in this area. We’re kind of the end of the road.” It is this very isolation — coupled with the popular art community — that eventually made Mendocino a sought-after tourist location and provided for the revitalization of the village, particularly after it was placed on the National Register of Historical Places. But the very means for its revitalization — the tourist industry — has recently become a source of strain on its citizens,
ABOVE: Vacation rentals overlook the cliffs of Mendocino, Calif. The village’s tourism industry presented a challenge during the drought, with establishments seeking to conserve water while still being accommodating to tourists. (Shutterstock.com)
and indeed, the very livelihood of the village itself. Since 2020, Mendocino and the surrounding area have experienced prolific drought conditions. “We’re in stage 4 drought. That’s as bad as it gets here,” said Katie Bates, who works at the Mendocino City Community Services District. “The village does not have a municipal water system, and the district does not supply any water. Citizens have to rely on individual private wells, some of which are the original wells from the 1850s that were hand-dug. The issue is that Mendocino is in an area which, because of its geology, it’s hard to get deeper into the underlying rock area. We got some rain in October, quite a bit. The beginning of our rain year begins Oct. 1, and as of (that date), we have 11.2 inches of rain. It has helped, but we’re still not out of the woods.”
