LONE PINE, Calif. -- In an arid Eastern Sierra region where people have had a keen appreciation for water since Los Angeles raided their supplies nearly a century ago, a new water war is brewing.
But this time the combatants are locals: A hunting club is battling a geothermal plant for control of an aquifer beneath the southern Owens Valley's lava flows and desert scrub.
The hunters view the aquifer as the lifeblood of their 50-year-old private club, Little Lake Ranch, and its spring-fed wetlands hugging U.S. Highway 395.
Their opponent, Coso Operating Co., sees the aquifer as a storehouse of the 4,800 acre-feet of water it will need each year to continue running what it calls environmentally friendly steam-driven turbines already providing about 250,000 homes with electricity.
Coso's hydrologists estimate the aquifer contains about 5 million acre-feet of water. But in a report to county planners, lawyers for the ranch argued that Little Lake is only about 3 feet deep and because of that, even a small decrease in water level could have serious ramifications for vegetation and wildlife.
The power plant operation, which netted $50 million as recently as 2004, also generates about $5 million in annual tax revenues and royalties for rural Inyo County. That's about 5% of its $80-million annual budget. The median household income in the county, where about 18,000 residents are scattered across 10,000 square miles, is about $35,000, according to U.S. census figures.
In the middle are county officials who must decide whether to grant Coso's application to build pipelines and pump water nine miles across the desert from the aquifer to the power plant, which, after 20 years in operation, is running low on well water.
"It's a tough one," said Inyo County Administrator Ron Juliff. "If there was ever an issue that could get this valley really stirred up, this is it."
The majority of the Inyo County Board of Supervisors, he said, tends to support Coso, which is situated within the high-security China Lake Naval Weapons Testing Center. After all, Juliff said, the hunters have been standoffish from the rest of the community for years. "We're talking about 22 guys who fenced off 1,200 acres out there," he said. "Then we never heard from them again until there was trouble."
The board is expected to make a final decision some time next year.
Company officials say they plan to monitor regional water levels, including those at Little Lake, and respond if they fall too low.
