GOOD OLD DAYS:

On June 12, one week after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought, the Orange County Water District celebrated its 75th anniversary with ceremonies and accolades.

The district is responsible for maintaining the county’s groundwater basin, recharging it with reclaimed water and supplies from the Santa Ana River.

“Probably no other physical feature of Orange County has played as important a part of its history and economic development as the Santa Ana River,” said Kathryn Barr, a 29-year veteran of the district’s board of directors. “Our district was created and assigned the important task of managing the flows and protecting our rights to the Santa Ana River.”

Despite the nation’s recent attention to climate, the Orange County area is no stranger to drought or flood.

As word of broken levees in the Midwest dominated the news cycle, many longtime Orange County residents were reminded of the flood of 1938, which covered nearly 50% of the county in water — breaking the Santa Ana River’s levees and leaving thousands homeless.

“Los Angeles can congratulate herself: Riverside and Orange took the brunt of the waters. Low-lying, they held the flood like gargantuan saucers,” a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote at the time.

A glass of water pumped from the county’s groundwater basin may be as much as 1,000 years old, depending on the length and depth of the well it came from, the district said.

José Antonio Yorba, one of Junipero Serra’s expeditionary companions, returned to the Santa Ana Valley in 1810 and established the right to use the river’s water.

Soon after, landowners north of the river filed suit against those on the southern side; the former wanted full rights to the water, but the latter claimed half the river’s flow.

The California Supreme Court finally ruled that both sides had right to the water.

The area’s rich agricultural beginnings were made possible by the plentiful water pumped from the ground; but as the area’s population and chili pepper, apple and citrus fields mushroomed, farmers began to deplete the groundwater supply.

If the groundwater basin is not kept to a certain level, sea water can intrude into the supply, making it unusable for drinking; it became a bane for farmers in the area’s early days.

At the same time, the Santa Ana River was being diverted throughout its nearly 100-mile course from San Gorgonio Mountain, leaving less available to farmers and residents nearer its terminus into the Pacific Ocean, just north of Newport Beach, and further lessening the supply in the groundwater basin.

An association was formed in the early 1900s to capture storm water runoff for the groundwater basin; previously, storm water only caused floods before escaping into the ocean.

In 1932, the Irvine Co. sued water users upstream, leading to the formation by the California State Legislature of the Orange County Water District the following year to protect the county’s river rights — just as the Metropolitan Water District was formed to protect Southern California’s right to water from the Colorado River.

“OCWD was formed in 1933 to take over lawsuits by local landowners to protect our rights to the Santa Ana River,” Barr said. “And we have successfully fulfilled this mission, as evidenced by our thriving local economy and Orange County lifestyles.”

The district made the area’s groundwater supply its top priority, and has since replenished the groundwater basin and increased its annual yield.

The basin primarily is recharged with water from the Santa Ana River, supplemented with imported Metropolitan Water District water as needed.

The district first purchased imported water from the Metropolitan Water District in 1949, following a severe drought.

It now serves more than 2 million county residents; the majority of Newport-Mesa’s water comes from the groundwater basin under North Orange County.

CANDICE BAKER may be reached at (949) 494-5480 or at candice.baker@latimes.com.