The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority (IWVGA) is preparing for significant legal exposure and attorney’s fees while trying to figure out a way to pay their overdue bills. This is a paraphrase from Mick Gleason, the chairperson of the GA made during the course of the meeting “It’s a mess”.

CONFERENCE WITH LEGAL COUNSEL – POTENTIAL LITIGATION
(Government Code Section 54956.9(d)(2)(e)(1)) Number of cases: One (1) Significant exposure to litigation in the opinion of the Board of Directors on the advice of legal counsel, based on: Facts and circumstances that might result in litigation against the IWVGA but which are not yet known to a potential plaintiff or plaintiffs, which facts and circumstances need not be disclosed.

We’d show you the video from the meeting but as of this writing, it hasn’t been made available to the public nearly a week after the meeting which nobody could attend in person and which nobody watched due to the fact the meeting was held during the workday on a Thursday.

We’ll be sure to pull some choice quotes from Supervisor Gleason, who admitted we have serious issues that need solutions. Nobody had any other than a guestimate of infrastructure costs running over $150 million and that doesn’t include the cost of the water!

Little notice has been given to the public, but here’s the key takeaway from the Agenda closed session: They’re gonna get sued, big time. We can hardly wait.

Here’s the 153 page Engineer’s Report that was released a few short days ahead of the meeting. Very few people had the chance to read it before the meeting and we have no recordings so we’ll report the news as soon as they release the video.

A reminder from the IWVGA:

“…the Basin’s Sustainable Yield is insufficient to meet the water needs of the Basin that could/should be classified as permanent needs and as such the IWVGA must rely on imported supplies.”

We need more water and residents in the IWV Water District and the City of Ridgecrest are about to pay millions and millions to import water as reward for their support of the Navy base and their employees over the last 75 years.