OJAI VALLEY : New Tax to Help Fund Water Agency

Ojai Valley landowners will be paying a new property tax this year after a recent decision by members of the Ojai Basin Groundwater Management Agency.

The agency--formed earlier this year by the Legislature to study and then monitor the extraction of ground water across a large swath of the Ojai Valley--voted at a meeting last week to levy the tax on landowners as a means of supplementing its initial budget, administrative assistant Harry Bodell said.

The charges--$7.50 a year for those holding one acre or less and $5 per acre for owners of more than one acre--are intended to augment the agency’s budget, which to date has consisted of $75,000 raised through charges to the Casitas Municipal Water District, the city of Ojai and the Southern California Water Co., Bodell said.

Several landowners spoke during a public hearing on the charges, but no one expressed opposition to the new tax, Bodell said.

Bodell, a retired aerospace engineer, was recently hired to work part time for the fledgling agency. The charges will allow the agency to pay his $11,000 yearly salary, said Charles Noren, president of the Siete Robles Mutual Water Co. in Ojai and a member of the agency’s board of directors.

The agency will soon put to bid an $80,000 study of all the ground water stored in the Ojai basin, the major item that this year’s budget will finance, Bodell said.