By Peter Day
Senior Reporter
The Lucerne Valley Economic Development Association has urged the county to allow hauled water for any residential development not served by a centralized water system.
"If the County's objective is to assure good quality water to residences, hauled water normally is of significantly better quality than the groundwater within the primary areas of concern," LVEDA President Chuck Bell wrote in a letter to members of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, including Supervisors James Ramos and Robert Lovingood.
Bell's letter addressed a consent calendar item for yesterday's meeting of the Board of Supervisors. Third District representative Ramos, who is chairman of the board, made a request to to study the hauled water issue for new individual single family residential construction on county unincorporated areas not served by water purveyors.
LVEDA's position is that a study is an unnecessary county expense and would take a long time to complete.
"While we appreciate the County finally doing something after over six years of this issue being front and center in our desert communities, we see no need for taxpayers having to the pay the costs of developing an estimate of cost and time required to study the use of hauled water," Bell wrote. "This action just sets in motion a long-term, unnecessary, bureaucratic process that would be a prelude to the actual study."
Bell maintains that the state's Department of Health Services may "not like water hauling," it doesn't prohibit it and, in fact, regulates it under the Sherman Act as an acceptable source.
"The County's current prohibition of hauled water to new development is not embodied in an ordinance nor in Development Code, but from what we understand exists only internally within the County Department of the Environmental Health Services," according to Bell.
Bell suggested allowing hauled water from a legally licensed source and from a licensed hauler.