Report on TWD Election Results of Jan. 15, 2025

If each property-owning voter had one vote, TWD would have lost.

As you have probably heard, the Tuscan Water District won its latest landowner-weighted election in January. It will now levy property taxes of $6.45 per acre on landowners within its footprint.

Those funds will only be enough to keep an office open and defend against lawsuits. Additional funding for infrastructure projects will have to come separately, such as from already flowing State of California grants.

In other words, TWD is collecting taxes from the very people who may challenge it legally, to cover the costs of fending them off in court. 

Groundwater for Butte has always regarded TWD as the illegitimate child of private ag interests in league with the State of California Department of Water Resources. That agency drew up plans decades ago to eventually section off our public groundwater basin as just another storage bank in the state’s vast water-distribution plumbing.

Based on our post-election analysis, if each property-owning voter had been given one vote, TWD would not have won this election.

Here is a quick breakdown of the numbers:

–Only 2/5 of the ballots sent out were returned. 2061 ballots went out, 831 were submitted.

–More than 50% of the returned ballots were “no” votes. 422 voted no, 404 voted yes, 5 were disqualified. 

–If we combine the votes of big landowning families into one vote each, quite a few more votes disappear from the “yes” column.

–Weighted for land ownership, the “yes” vote was 7 times the “no” vote.

404 owners of 53,059 acres got their way over422 owners of 7,504 acres.*

The process was perfectly designed from the start to achieve exactly this result: A quasi-private entity, responsive principally to large ag interests, is now positioned to manage the Tuscan Aquifer for obscure private and State agendas at potentially disastrous expense to the public interest. 

However, we at Groundwater for Butte are proud to have stuck with our efforts because it’s quite clear the community is beginning to wake up to what has been going on.

Many thanks to those of you who donated to help us sound the alarm about this latest questionable election, and to those of you who helped by sending mailers, canvassing, posted road signs, and getting the word out. We hope you’ll continue to stay tuned and watch how the groundwater situation develops from here.

A new Groundwater for Butte Steering Committee is gearing up to launch a new website, keep tabs on TWD and the various other entities determining groundwater management, and protect our community from further backroom shenanigans going forward.

G4B will continue to be a force in our community to defend our local groundwater.

–The Groundwater for Butte team

*Election results: Jan 15, 2025

Total acres within the boundaries of the TWD: 96,170 (according to the election packet put out by the TWD Board).

Results based on their process (the official certified figures):
YES votes: 34,222,913
NO votes:     4,839,853 

The above figures were calculated by the number of acres in a parcel multiplied by 645, which is based on the $6.45 tax assessment without the decimal point. We couldn’t figure out why they did it this way either, but have to assume it was meant to make it look like TWD won by even more than it did. To calculate the number of acres per ballot (ballot = parcel), we divided their YES and NO numbers by 645. Thus:

Results by number of acres:

YES votes:  34,222,913 / 645 = 53,059 acres    

NO votes:      4,839,853 / 645 = 7,504 acres

Petitioners vs. Protesters:  Further illustration of an undemocratic process

Petitioners are those who actively sought the TWD’s establishment, while Protesters are those who returned the initial “protest” ballots from Butte County LAFCo, rejecting TWD.

Number of acres held by petitioners and by protestors:
Petitioners: 49,622 acres from 663 parcels, average parcel size 74.84 acres

Protesters:    2,170 acres from 189 parcels, average parcel size 11.48 acres 

Based on the above numbers, we can also deduce that over 2/3 of non-Protest landowners voted NO, while only 16% of non-Petition landowners voted YES.

Approximate NO votes from landowners who were not protestors (based on number of protestors):     7,504 – 2,170 = 5,334

Approximate YES votes from landowners who were not petitioners (based on number of petitioners): 53,059 – 49,622 = 3,437