The water supply for Sonoma and Marin county is at risk!  From the O.W.L. Foundation of Sonoma County comes proof positive from a disinterested third party ( an international team of geophysicists) that the aquifer in the Rohnert Park area, which includes the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria's casino building site, is in serious overdraft. What the information below means is that any further pumping of groundwater in this area, especially on the scale the casino project would demand, would most likely result in the collapse of the aquifer. Once this happens, the aquifer is lost forever.

Both STC101 and the O.W.L. Foundation have for years, attempted to warn the tribe, the federal government and the state government about the danger of building the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria's casino on the Rohnert Park-area site. With the state’s water crisis that is expected to continue and even worsen in the future, this depletion of the Santa Rosa Plain aquifer, as well as the serious traffic concerns, many of which were voiced in Senator Migden’s letter to the editor of the Petaluma Argus-Courier, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria's casino is clearly a regional issue.

FROM THE O.W.L. FOUNDATION:  "The O.W.L. Foundation has learned that data from the European InSAR Satellite reveals that Rohnert Park is sinking due to excessive groundwater pumping. The joint American-Italian study described the depression as a: "" . . . deformation . . . consistent with land subsidence due to groundwater extraction, perhaps enhanced by weak fine-grained floodplain sediments upon which Rohnert Park is built. "

The subsidence was noticed during a 10-year seismological study, "Creep on the Rodgers Creek fault . . ." published on October 10, 2007 by the American Geophysical Union. It confirms what the O.W.L. ("Open Space, Water and Land") Foundation and the California Department of Water Resources have long suspected, that the massive drop in the water table has removed underground support and the aquifer is collapsing in a dangerous process called "land subsidence."

When land sinks due to groundwater extraction the underlying aquifers collapse. Once an aquifer collapses, that storage space is permanently lost thereby reducing already constrained future water supplies. Whatever damage has been or will be caused to existing aquifers is permanent, and the threat to local water supplies is very real and very serious.

Land subsidence would explain why homeowners in Rohnert Park complain of houses that tilt or otherwise fall out of plumb. The sinking land mass would also explain why Rohnert Park suffered unprecedented flooding in January 2005 and boats were needed to navigate the streets. It could also explain why a massive underground sewage pipe broke during that storm.

Rohnert Park relies in part on groundwater for its water supply, Of serious concern to the O.W.L. Foundation are Rohnert Park’s plans for six ambitious specific projects and the 729,000 square foot Graton casino that comes with a federal water right, and which plans to sink multiple 1,000 to 2,000 foot wells to provide water to its estimated 15,000+ patrons per day.

"More pumping will guarantee more subsidence", said H.R. Downs, President of the O.W.L. Foundation. "Now that subsidence is an established scientific fact, the big question today is will the city continue to sink with these projects? "

To view the InSAR satellite data, CLICK HERE    Also see How InSAR Works

The O.W.L. Foundation is a California non-profit corporation devoted to educating the public and government agencies about the water crisis, sensible land use policy and open space issues. Visit their web site at www.owlfoundation.net