Leaked emails reveal that Mendocino County Water Agency staff hosted an employee pool party and used the last 5,000 gallons of the public water available in the county.
Drought conditions for several years and conservation mismanagement in the county led to total and complete depletion of usable water in the regional aquifer system.
With no rainfall predicted in the foreseeable future and furlough on the horizon for most of the Agency staff, employees concocted a scheme to make lemons out of lemonade. “We’ve been working our asses off these past few years building catchment systems, drilling wells, and posting educational resources throughout the county to try to save as much water and extend the reserves we control, but with no good weather in sight, we thought we’d make the best of a bad situation,” says Water Agency pool inspector Rico Morales.
As nearby lawns and vineyards dried out, Water Agency employees ate and drank to excess. “It was a wild night and we partied from midnight to dawn,” recalls Ian McRevey, an all-around maintenance expert who’s worked for the Water Agency since he graduated from Willits High School 8 years ago, “I even peed in the pool.”
North Mendo Beer Company donated 3 kegs of beer and The Ukiah Catering Company provided high-end hors d’oeuvres. A municipal cistern in Potter Valley was the site of the festivities because someone on the staff had a key.
Everyone in attendance left with a 5-gallon jug of the stolen water. Said one staffer who attended but wished to remain anonymous, “Every pool in the county has been bone dry since last year and we just wanted one last hurrah before we all lost our jobs and the regional supply went away forever.”
The county plans to buy water from Washington and Oregon and truck it in for redistribution. County officials fear that civil conflict over water resources is a real and present danger to this community in crisis, and they hope that the depraved indifference toward the catastrophe by county employees is not the inciting incident that drives residents over the edge.