UPA serves CCWD with lawsuit

Utica Power Authority on Tuesday served Calaveras County Water District with a lawsuit, plus some harsh words, in a long-simmering water-rights battle.

At issue is whether CCWD retained any water rights along the Utica Ditch — between Hunters Reservoir, near Hathaway Pines, and the Angels Powerhouse — when it left the UPA in 2004.
 

Utica Power filed the complaint in April, and it was served Tuesday by Betty Raggio, the widow of Paul Raggio, according to a UPA spokeswoman. Paul Raggio, a longtime Angels Camp City Council and UPA board member who died May 25, was an outspoken proponent of UPA’s water rights claims.

UPA put off serving the complaint until Monday to allow settlement negotiations to proceed, according to a press release from UPA general counsel Ellen Vogt and Michael Milward, of Arnold.

“UPA has worked very diligently to negotiate a settlement with CCWD and we have made a great deal of progress in resolving the water rights and property issues raised in the lawsuit. In fact, we were very close to settling those issues,” acting UPA Chairman Ray Behrbaum stated in the release. “Unfortunately, CCWD continues to interject new issues many months into the settlement process ... and that has prevented a settlement agreement from being finalized. We are attempting to reach an agreement on those issues as well.”

CCWD Board of Directors President Bob Dean reacted with anger and disappointment to news the suit was headed to court.

“I’m incredibly disappointed the choices were made and with the people that made the choices. In an era of serious economic decline ... to be throwing public money at a lawsuit is, in my estimation, approaching a tragedy,” Dean said. “I had a little more faith in the people that have been proponents of this. Arbitration and mediation should have been an option.”

The action taken by UPA, he added, is an enormous step backward.

“They have exposed the county’s water rights to possible assault from the outside. It seems they just want to pick a fight. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

“It is the UPA board’s unanimous position that CCWD’s proposed arbitration is totally unnecessary,” that agency’s statement reads.

Angels Camp Mayor Jack Lynch, a UPA director, said in a statement that CCWD’s position is “absurd.”

“Water has been delivered into the Utica system for years, in amounts that CCWD itself agreed to.”

Despite the legal wranglings, Behrbaum said that UPA is willing to continue to pursue negotiations.

“Even with these difficulties, we will continue to try to reach an agreement with CCWD,” he said.

Dean has been outspoken in his contention that the matter should be settled anywhere but in a courtroom.

“The only people that are going to win in this are the attorneys,” he said.