Precautionary Principle
The precautionary principle states that "If an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action." The precautionary principle serves as a point of law in the European Union, and guides many EU policies. It has also been adopted as an ordinance for the City of San Francisco and was cited in a decision in an Australian environmental court case.
I would argue that it would serve us well to apply the precautionary principle right here in Butte County. The Tuscan aquifer would be a good place to start.
It is unfortunate that the Butte Environmental Council was unable to persuade a Glenn County Superior Court judge to require more environmental review for a project by Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District to pump water from seven test wells into deep aquifers in Butte, Glenn and Tehama counties. According to BEC, GCID’s proposed project will extract a volume of ground water that approaches or exceeds the current utilization by the city of Chico, creating the likelihood of a significant adverse environmental impact.
Quoted in the Chico Beat this bast September, District Manager Thaddeus Bettner stated: "Just to be fair, we want to operate [the wells] so potentially they do cause impacts," Bettner said. "If we just operate them for a month we could say, ‘Oh there is no impact.' It's such a small amount of time. But realistically, to be honest and open about it, you need to operate them in such a manner that you look at a worst-case scenario. We'd want to do that because it's in the public interest to know those impacts."
Despite this being a "test" scenario, manipulating our aquifers in this manner doesn' t make sense to me, especially considering that they a) aren't very well understood in the first place; and b) provide water to thousands of people and supports the livelihood of hundreds of farmers (not to mention the tens of thousands of people that rely on the production of those farmers).
Even if BEC is wrong in their claim that these wells may cause a significant adverse environmental impact, I don't like the risks. There must be a better way to study the Tuscan and Tehama aquifers than by pumping water out of them.