Where there is some motion on the part of area water agencies to address the ongoing drought, long-term questions about water management here in the San Jacinto Valley are getting little attention.

Oh yes, the settlement with the Soboba Indians has been formally signed and ratified, but implementation of its attendant groundwater management plan waits indefinitely upon government process and procedure.

It is comforting on the other hand, to see advisories to the public about the importance of saving water. Moreover, local water agencies are not at all premature in their recent implementation of tiered rates as water-saving consumer incentives. More information, too, is being posted through the media about wise water use and drought-resistant landscaping, and all that is good.

But, I think it is paramount that the public understand the importance of implementing a water management plan for the San Jacinto Valley that applies the principles of mutual cooperation and public stewardship outlined in recent interagency discussions and agreements between the cities of Hemet and San Jacinto and the Metropolitan, Eastern Municipal and Lake Hemet Municipal water districts. Putting off sound basin management practices because of the ongoing drought while abjectly wringing hands over the sluggishness of finalizing the Indian water settlement process is unconscionable. A commendable mutually cooperative effort to universally observe sound groundwater management practices from all participants has, in the meantime, degenerated into a desperate run by all parties on the precious reserves of naturally collected water in the San Jacinto groundwater basins.

Nearly 60 years ago, ranchers and residents in the San Jacinto Valley successfully requested annexation into the Metropolitan Water District. It was clear even then that our natural groundwater reserves were being pumped faster than they could be replenished. Eastern Municipal Water District was established, and water from Metropolitan’s Colorado River Aqueduct was diverted to stem our local overdraft. Years later, the Colorado water deliveries stopped due to its poor quality and the absence of local treatment facilities. We turned to depend upon State Project Water and continued to draw down the basins, even exporting our own naturally produced water out of the area. Now, State Project Water deliveries are substantially threatened, and our local treatment capacity is limited. Water cannot be directly delivered from the largely depleted Diamond Valley Reservoir, for instance, because MWD has no treatment facilities there.

The crowning irony to this rapidly developing predicament is contamination of the San Jacinto Groundwater Basin’s critical recharge and storage area through continued percolation of sewage produced by the Soboba Casino, which rests directly over the highly permeably riverbed sediments of the San Jacinto River. This is a serious problem. The Indian settlement requires that all agencies and participants strive to their fullest to preserve and enhance the quality of the underlying groundwater, as do the principles of water management agreed upon several years ago by the Groundwater Management Planning Group. Yet questions of Indian sovereignty, responsibility, official trepidation, and apathy allow a major heavily trafficked public activity to operate over a critical water resource with nothing but a septic system between it and the water we all drink.

I am certain that the above commentary will bring on a storm of rationalization as the conscious intent of all governmental bodies responsible for our collective health and welfare is beyond reproach. But, I am not off the mark in observing that the present over-reaching statewide water quality and resource crisis will only be exacerbated here by local officials, who are waiting for Washington and resting on the notion that every water provider needs to fend for itself when it comes to finding a convenient water hole. There’s more to water management than sending out a list of water-saving tips and waiting for the rains to come.

Lifelong San Jacinto Valley resident Rob Lindquist is retired from Lake Hemet Municipal Water District.