Mendocino schools broke water permit rules, county staff says

MENDOCINO CO., 9/16/2026 — The Mendocino Unified School District has two new water tanks on its land off Little Lake Road. In July and August, it filled them with water pumped from its wells.

County planning staff say that broke the district’s permit. The permit allowed filling the tanks only in the rainy months.

On Thursday, the county Planning Commission takes up a new version of that permit. It would drop the rainy-season rule. It would let the district pump more water in the dry months. And it would let the district use a new well for school water.

Who decides

The county Planning Commission decides whether to approve the permit. The school land is in the coastal zone, so the permit is a coastal development permit. That means opponents can appeal the county’s decision to the California Coastal Commission, the state agency that oversees building along the coast.

The county won’t issue the permit until any appeals are over, county staff wrote in an Aug. 28 memo to the commission.

Coastal Commission staff can also send the county comments before it decides. They did that this time, in an Aug. 13 letter.

How we got here

The county approved the project in April 2024: two new tanks and up to 10 new wells. Max Yeh, a Mendocino resident, appealed to the Coastal Commission.

The county Planning Commission changed the permit in December 2024. It said the district could drill up to six test wells. Before using any of them for school water, it had to come back to the commission. The permit also said the district could fill the tanks only from Oct. 15 to May 15. In the dry months, it could add only about 5,000 gallons a day on average. Yeh and nine others appealed again.

In April 2025, the Coastal Commission found that neither appeal raised a “substantial issue.” That meant it would not take up the appeals, so the county’s December 2024 permit stood.

In the summer and fall of 2025, the district drilled two test wells. Only one worked, county planner Rob Fitzsimmons told the commission. In September, the district’s engineering firm, GHD, pumped that well, Test Well 7, for three days and checked 16 private wells nearby. Its October report found the water in those wells did not drop by any amount it could measure. Work on constructing the two new water tanks started in October.

The district asked the county to let it use Test Well 7 in December 2025 for school water. The county sent GHD’s report to its Environmental Health office, which the permit says must approve it.

The tanks were finished this July. The district filled them before school started in July and August, using more than 600,000 gallons, county staff said at a Sept. 3 meeting.

Why the tanks were filled in summer

Superintendent Jason Morse explained in an Aug. 21 letter to the county, posted with the commission’s meeting records. The tanks are the only place the schools store water, he wrote. New tanks must be filled before they can be tested for leaks and bacteria. He also wrote that no harm to neighbors’ wells was found.

County staff didn’t agree. In the Aug. 28 memo, they wrote that filling the tanks in July and August “constitutes a violation of the permit.”

When the commission wrote the rule in December 2024, Matt Kennedy of GHD asked what it covered. Commissioner Marie Jones answered that the tanks had to be filled in the rainy season, with no exceptions.

But staff also wrote that no one at that meeting realized the rule could leave the schools without water for almost the first two months of the school year. If that had been clear, the decision “might have been different,” the memo said.

What the new plan would do

• Let the district pump year-round, with a dry-season limit of 25,500 gallons a day on average. That’s five times the old limit. GHD says it’s the most water the schools need on their busiest day.

• Let the district use Test Well 7 for school water.

• Require Environmental Health to approve GHD’s groundwater report before the county issues the permit.

• Require a pumping test on all the district’s wells, with the results shared at a school board meeting.

• Require the district to report how much water it pumps every three months for five years.

Staff said the district agreed to the testing and the reports.

What the new plan would not do

• It would not require the district to share water with neighbors whose wells go dry in a drought. The permit says the district “can” share. An earlier draft of the new plan said the district would have to share when it could. Commissioners took that out Sept. 3.

• It would not turn down the district’s request because of the tank violation. Staff did not recommend that.

Has anyone checked the well report?

Not yet, as of late August.

GHD’s report says how much water Test Well 7 can give and whether pumping it lowers neighbors’ wells. It is not about whether the water is safe to drink.

The permit says the county’s Environmental Health office must approve the report. But that office has no water expert on staff, so it hires outside experts to check reports like this one, the Aug. 28 memo said.

When the report came in last December, the county had no contract with an outside expert, Fitzsimmons told the commission Aug. 20. No one had checked it since.

Now the county is working on a contract with a firm called Larry Walker Associates to do the check. It should take about two weeks once the contract is approved, the memo said.

County staff at first suggested skipping the check. Coastal Commission staff objected in their Aug. 13 letter. So the new plan keeps it: the report must be approved before the county issues the permit that would let the district use the well.

The commission meets at 9:30 a.m. Thursday in the Board of Supervisors chambers, 501 Low Gap Road in Ukiah. People can also watch and comment on Zoom through this link.