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 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.”

The community on the coastal cliffs relies on an aquifer underneath the village, which gets refilled mainly by groundwater from rainfall. But they share the rainfall with surrounding natural habitats, such as ones generated by rainwater flowing over the cliffs into the ocean. The freshwater creates habitats in the rocks of the cliffs that the ocean brine water wouldn’t normally be able to sustain. Though the deficit of water from the last year of drought is being filled, residents still need to pull water from the aquifer, which makes it a slower process.

“It’s a real challenge when we don’t get the rainfall that we’re accustomed to,” stated Schmidt. “We do have mutual water companies that draw water from wells and then distribute it to people within their community. But probably the majority of people actually have their own individual wells, so when the aquifer starts to drop, that’s when people’s wells go dry. They have to start trucking water in to store onsite, which is very expensive.”

Inland from the coast, other towns that Mendocino was buying its water from are experiencing the same water shortage, but for a different reason: the reservoirs that supply the rivers have been diminished because of the lack of snowmelt.

“Fort Bragg draws their water from the local river, and when the river goes down because of lack of snowmelt, it can get brackish at high tide,” Schmidt explained. “They did make a desalination system, which meant they could keep processing water when the river goes brackish as the tide comes in. The problems according to each individual area are pretty unique, with a different thing to tackle.”

Still, in the severity of a stage 4 drought, even that was not enough. On July 9, Fort Bragg cut off outside water sales. The lack of water was hitting it at a level that meant it could not promise its citizens enough water while also continuing to sell water to outside customers. This was hard on the citizens of Mendocino.

“It got very difficult for a lot of people,” Bates said. “Fort Bragg cut off water, and we still had two other outside sources, but eventually they cut off water sales as well. At that point, the county stepped in, and our board of supervisors voted to purchase water from Ukiah, which is a town over the hill an hour away, bring it over here, have it treated through the Fort Bragg water system and have the water haulers deliver it to our customers in Mendocino.

“That lengthier route of travel the water took constituted an almost triple increase in the price per gallon. What normally would have been a $400 delivery of water from the Fort Bragg reservoir was all of the sudden almost $1 per gallon. If they’re delivering 1,500 gallons, and the price is almost $1 per gallon, what used to cost $400 is now more than triple.”

The board of supervisors tried to mitigate the costs. Bates explained the board could bring the cost for residential customers back to normal, but the commercial customers remained at the higher rate. The commercial customers had the possibility of passing the extra cost on to their customers, whereas the residents would not have had a way to deal with skyrocketing water costs.

“When you take away water, it gets pretty hairy,” remarked Bates. “We had people who didn’t have any drinking water. Or even water to bathe in. You need it to stay alive; you need it for hygiene, let alone cooking. It is the basic need. Niagara Bottling gave us a ton of bottled water, which we were able to hand out to people who needed it. But it was tough for a while.”

The village’s tourist industry provided another challenge. During the drought, Mendocino, purchased supplementary water from Ukiah, Calif., after Fort Bragg ceased selling water to outside customers. Pictured are colorful historic houses in Mendocino. (oliverdelahaye/Shutterstock.com)

People walk along a wood sidewalk while visiting stores in Mendocino. (oliverdelahaye/Shutterstock.com)

“People come from out of town to our area because it’s beautiful, it’s picturesque, it’s historical,’ said Bates. “They’re on vacation; they don’t want to think about a drought. They want to take a long bath, and sit in the hot tub, and wash the car, and wash off their wetsuits, and it’s like wait, wait, wait, wait! All of that requires water! The owners of establishments all over the village put up signs asking people to adhere to water conservancy tactics, alerting tourists that the area was under extreme drought. But the problem is you can’t cut a customer off from water, or they’ll go stay somewhere else. We have establishments that are forced to go over their allotment, through no fault of their own.”

The MCCSD has been monitoring water usage of groundwater since the ’70s when it was tasked with determining how much water each parcel of land could viably take out of the ground. That documentation has continued today. Well owners send in water readings every month, and it is compiled into data that allows the district to keep track of how much water each well is using and how much water is available to the community.

“The groundwater management program is working in that people are super aware of it and keeping track of their water usage,” reported Bates. “For the most part, everybody in this town is fantastic at conservation. We think about the aquifer under the town as a big glass and each well is like a straw into the glass. So if you take too much water, your neighbor is not going to have enough. We’re definitely all in this together. When you take a drink of water, you’re concerned whether your neighbor is also going to be able to take a drink of water.”

In the absence of government and under the extreme experience of not having the basic substance needed for life, the way this community has held together is unique. It has centered on changing the way everyone thinks about water and accepting how actions will affect the village. When water is always plentiful, it ceases to be thought of as a necessity and, instead, can be thought of as a commodity. A commodity can seem as if it’s just a useful convenience, and conveniences are often wasted, because of the human idea that a surplus of a thing changes its value.

“It’s just a totally different way of thinking about it,” Bates said. “I remember learning about drought even as a little kid. And sure, droughts seem to be centered only in a particular area, but we should be conscious of it no matter where we are. We’re here together: What I do affects my neighbor. Sure, we’re just the microcosm, but the macrocosm is absolutely how we should be looking at things globally. We do affect each other, and what we do does matter in the big picture.” Headlands State Park is one place that draws tourists to Mendocino. Signage was used to educate out-of-town visitors on conserving water. (Srishti Sethi via Wikimedia Commons; shorturl.at/airR3)

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