In Wake of Explosive Revelations, Santa Rosa Councilmember & Groundwater Agency Director Stapp Approved New Fees Despite Wife's Counsel Position at Jackson Family Wines
Santa Rosa Councilmember Stapp's spouse is the EVP, General Counsel at Jackson Family Wines - is this why groundwater sustainability fees are skyrocketing for rural homeowners relying on wells?
Vice Mayor Mark Stapp was elected to City Council in 2022 representing District 2, which includes neighborhoods around Montgomery Village, Bennett Valley, and Taylor Mountain. Simultaneously, he serves on the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency Board.
The Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) is a public agency formed to sustainably manage groundwater in the Santa Rosa Plain groundwater basin.
As referenced from his statement of economic interest, his spouse, Ms. Vivian Stapp, is the EVP, General Counsel at Jackson Family Wines.
Jackson Family Wines owns the following Santa Rosa based wineries:
The Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) adopted a resolution updating the groundwater sustainability fees to fund local sustainable groundwater management.
The rate adopted for 2024-2025 is $43.65 per-acre-foot of groundwater pumped annually with actual rates determined by estimated extraction by user type. Rural residents, who use groundwater for one home, garden and landscaping are estimated to use 0.5 acre feet of groundwater annually, so their fee is $21.83 a year. Estimated fees can be viewed by parcel at the Groundwater User Information Data Exchange (GUIDE). Fees are collected via a parcel owner’s property tax bill.
The fee resolution was considered by the GSA Board and adopted on June 13, 2024.
The June 13 meeting agenda and meeting packet is posted on the meeting calendar on this website.
The Agency provided the following language to challenge incorrect groundwater fees:
The Groundwater Users Information Data Exchange (GUIDE) program was developed to provide the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) with current and refined information about groundwater use in the basin and to give you and other groundwater users an opportunity to view the available data about your parcel’s estimated groundwater use.
Your parcel’s estimated groundwater use is based on the best data available to the GSA. Through the GUIDE program, you can view, correct, or confirm the data the GSA has used for your property within the basin by completing the GUIDE survey. If your corrected data would alter the calculation for your groundwater sustainability fee, staff will assess and work with you to correct.
If you believe there was an issue in the calculation of your groundwater sustainability fee, you must first submit a GUIDE Survey and pay the groundwater sustainability fee. If staff review of your GUIDE survey determines that a fee adjustment is not warranted, you will have the chance to appeal this decision. An appeals form will be automatically sent to you after staff review of your GUIDE survey.
Within 30 days of receiving an appeal, the Administrator will meet with you to discuss the basis of the appeal. A determination shall be made no later than 15 days following the meeting. If the appeal is granted in whole or in part, you will receive a check for the refunded amount.
The Administrator’s decision can be disputed by filing a formal appeal to the GSA’s Board of Directors within 15 days of the delivery of the determination, as described in Ordinance 22-01.
Despite his family’s financial interest in the wine industry, Mr. Stapp voted in favor of approving the updated groundwater sustainability fee resolution.
Local resident and frequent GSA Meeting Attendee Michael Hilber brought the following information to my attention:
The policy for the Santa Rosa Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) is that commercial and agricultural wells will continue to be exempt from mandatory metering. This we are told is at odds with many GSA’s in other counties. Others often require metering for wells that pump 2.0 acre feet of water or more per year. So, this obviously benefits the wine industry, as neither wells used for vineyard irrigation or winery operations would be subject to metering which would get an accurate read on water use.
Instead of metering, they use a low-ball “estimate” for water use. The Santa Rosa GSA uses only 0.6 acre-feet per acre as the estimated vineyard irrigation instead of the 2.0 acre-feet per acre which is common according to the California Department of Water Resources. This number can vary, but 2.0 is much more reasonable than 0.6, and the 0.6 number adopted saves the wine industry a ton of money.
There are other policies like exemptions for so-called “dry farming” where claimants can be paying nothing. However, these can often be fraudulent in the sense that a grapevine’s roots can extend down to the water table, into the groundwater, and draw up groundwater for both growth and transpiration. Thus, a “dry-farmed” vineyard can claim exemption, yet still be impacting the groundwater basin simply by drawing the water even though not “irrigated.
Mr. Hilber shared the following email thread amongst himself and California Department of Water Resources Employee Gholam Shakouri:
Greetings,
I wonder if any of you might be willing to help me. I am looking to answer a question. If the DWR were to take over Groundwater management for a county in Northern California is there a table of water use that would be employed? I am specifically interested in vineyard water use. As in how many acre feet per acre would the estimated water use be? Or to put it another way, how many inches per year for irrigation? I read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. It said this:
“Let’s say everything is equal and you have wine grapes growing exactly next to almonds. The almonds are going to use more water,” said Mallika Necco, an assistant adjunct professor in UC Davis’ Dept. of Land, Air and Water Resources and an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Generally, a grapevine might use 25-35 inches of water per year, while it might require 41-54 inches to irrigate almonds, according to Megan Bartlett, an assistant professor in UC Davis’ Dept. of Viticulture and Enology.
So this is saying 25 to 35 inches, or 2 feet-plus. Or 2 acre-feet per acre of vineyard of water use is how I read it. Is this accurate? Is there a table of water use for various crop types you can direct me to, one that the DWR would use if managing groundwater in an area with various crops including vineyards?
Thank you
--
Mike Hilber
Gholam sent the following response:
Hi Mike,
Based on your email, yes, you understood it correctly that vineyard uses 2 acre -feet per acre of water. Per your request attached Excel files are 2020 agricultural water use data by County for 20 crop categories by unit values & volume in California. Please note that the data were produced/developed by using Cal-Simetaw model from all 4 DWR’s Regional Offices for the California Water Plan -Updates 2023. FYI, we have developed Excel tool applications for accessing our historical Statewide ag water use data from 1998 -2015. Those Excel tool applications are available on the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) open data source. You can access them via this link Agricultural Land & Water Use Estimates (ca.gov)
For your information, DWR utilizes the Cal-SIMETAW model to determine crop evapotranspiration (ETc) and ET of applied water (ETaw) for agricultural crops by DAU/County within the state. ETaw is an estimate of the depth of applied irrigation water that contributes to the seasonal crop evapotranspiration or needed to produce a crop. If the water used for evapotranspiration comes from another source, e.g., rainfall, fog, water tables or seepage, or preseason stored soil moisture, it is not from applied water and, hence, is not part of the ETaw. Water diversions for irrigation of various crops are determined by dividing the ETaw by and estimated seasonal application efficiency, which depends on the irrigation system distribution uniformity (DU) and the application of an amount of water to increase the soil water content to near field capacity in the lower quarter (LQ).
The application computes reference evapotranspiration (ETo) from daily values of solar radiation, maximum and minimum temperature, dew point temperature (or maximum and minimum Relative Humidity), and wind speed using the standardized reference ET equation. The daily ETo and crop coefficients are used to estimate crop evapotranspiration (ETc), which is a product of ETo and a Kc.
Please see the attached paper for more information on the Cal-SIMETAW model. BTW, if you have specific questions about ground water management in Northern California, please contact Michelle Dooley or Monique Gaido in DWR’s Northern Region Office (Red Bluff). Both have been cc’d in this email.
I hope that helps out.
Take care/Gholam Shakouri
DWR
As Mr. Hilber expressed, the GSA approved the updated fee study as follows:
Additionally, the GSA is currently conducting a Stormwater Capture and Recharge Planning pilot study submitted by Bachand and Associates in collaboration with the Sonoma Resource Conservation District, GeoSystems Analysis, and Rambol. This document was included in the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency Advisory Committee Meeting Packet for May 13, 2024.
The Executive Summary is described as:
This Scope of Work provides a proposal for advancing stormwater capture and recharge pilot studies in both the Santa Rosa Plain and the Petaluma Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agencies. For the Santa Rosa Plain, the proposal covers implementation of an On-Farm Recharge pilot study over one-year of field work (Task 1), and the high-level planning for an upland pilot study in Crane Creek Regional Park (Task 3). For the Petaluma Valley, the proposal covers a regional appraisal on groundwater benefits with upland stormwater management and recharge on vineyards, rangelands, or other lands, as well as the planning implementation of a pilot (Task 2).
For each of these tasks, a schedule and budget are developed with all work under this proposal scheduled for completion by the end of March 2026.
For each task, optional subtasks are developed. These optional subtasks are provided to satisfy interest in these GSAs for what should be next if these efforts are continued and what is the scale and cost of the effort. These optional subtasks vary depending upon the current progress in each technology:
A second-year field study is described for Task 1 OFR Pilot in Santa Rosa Plain;
The implementation of the field study is described for Task 2 Upland Pilot in the Petaluma Valley; and
A range of next steps are laid out for the design and permitting of Crane Creek, Task 3, in Santa Rosa Plain.
For each Task, the optional subtask’s budget and schedule are developed to the degree possible. The budgets are provided as estimates of expected effort and should be considered preliminary. Crane Creek is the most uncertain effort so the Task 3 budget is provided as a range of costs. Final budgets for the optional tasks under each Task and effort can be further refined through the work on this Project.
The Landowner Engagement and Pilot Site Identification segment of the pilot study stated:
Potential pilot project OFR sites along Mark West in the Santa Rosa Plain GSA will be determined through a preliminary review of available public information, discussions with landowners who have supported these programs historically, and assessment of operations. This analysis will assume that successful OFR implementation requires broad implementation at scale for benefits to be significant. In the Santa Rosa Plain GSA, vineyards cover nearly 10,000 acres (approximately 12%) in 2016 (SRPGSA 2021).
Pilot project selection will target a site with a range of soil conditions and hydrology representative of the larger GSA along Mark West Creek in consideration of available vineyards, and proximity of GDEs (SRPGSP 2023, PVGSP 2023). Selection will include other important considerations such as proximity to a water source with sufficient volume for a pilot project, and potential effects on GDEs and fisheries, input from stakeholders (e.g., CDFW, National Marine Fisheries), and interest of partnering landowners. For the latter, this subtask will focus on working with landowners and landowner agencies previously interested and active. This potentially includes Jackson Family Wines, which has been active since funding the Saralee study (Bachand 2019, Bachand et al 2019) and tentatively agreed to participate in pilot studies (JFW 2023).
Our team will facilitate the necessary agreements to be made with partners to ensure necessary confidentiality. These agreements will be developed in collaboration with the participating landowner and their GSA. Landowner agreements developed for the Alexander Valley project could potentially be used as templates.
The Acknowledgements segment of the study stated:
We appreciate the support of the Jackson Family Wine organization and its partners in support of all aspects of the project including planning, site setup, irrigation management, tracking crop health, data collection, and maintaining continued enthusiasm and interest.
Government Code Section 1090 prohibits an officer, employee, or agency from participating in making government contracts in which the official or employee within the agency has a financial interest. Section 1090 applies to virtually all state and local officers, employees, and multimember bodies, whether elected or appointed, at both the state and local level.
“Making” a contract includes final approval of the agreement, as well as involvement in preliminary discussion, planning, negotiation, and solicitation of bids.
Have Mr. Stapp and his spouse utilized his position as a Board Member to the GSA to take advantage of the taxpayers while benefitting local wineries under the umbrella of Jackson Family Wines?
Mr. Stapp and Santa Rosa Councilmember Chris Rogers recently chose to mock me by text message. I received their correspondence through a Public Records Act request. Please be sure to applaud Mr. Stapp for inspiring today’s headline.
“Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain.”
Psalm 119:36