This month marks the 75th anniversary of the formation of the Inverness Public Utility District in 1948. An open house is slated at the Inverness firehouse on Aug. 11 from 3 to 6 p.m. (all welcome!). The next day, Saturday, during the Inverness Fair, the Jack Mason Museum will unveil an exhibit honoring IPUD. The summer issue of the museum’s quarterly publication, “Under the Gables,” features an historical overview of the district written by yours truly. For a PDF of the article, email
[email protected].
I’d like to expand on the lead-up to IPUD taking over the water system on Jan. 1, 1980. First, I need to go back to 1948. The intent in forming the district had been to buy the Inverness Water Company, which was available for just $20,000. But each of three attempts to secure voter approval of bonds to finance the purchase fell short of the required two-thirds majority by one or two votes. IPUD ceased to function. The district was revived in 1951 for a different purpose, to provide tax-based support for the volunteer fire brigade that had formed in 1948.
In 1960, the Inverness Water Company was sold to a nationwide conglomerate, Citizens Utilities. By the 1970s, many in Inverness were upset with Citizens over what they perceived as poor customer service and water of questionable quality and reliability. A committee to study public acquisition of the system formed under the leadership of David Plant.
The committee made a startling discovery when the results of the 1970 national census were released: Inverness was designated as a poverty pocket. How so, you ask? The town had become a magnet in the late ’60s for a certain socioeconomic class of young folks who had sojourned to the Bay Area for the 1967 Summer of Love and tended to have not much in the way of documentable income to report. Statistically, their numbers and their meagre earnings showed that the town was so “poor” that it was eligible for low-interest loans and copious grant funds to rehabilitate such infrastructure as the water system.
The committee approached IPUD’s three-member board of directors in early 1975 about taking advantage of the possible cornucopia of federal assistance to acquire the water company. The seats of two longtime directors, George Ludy and Stewart Purcell, were up for re-election in November. The third member, architect Sim Van der Ryn, was resigning because he was moving to Sacramento to accept his appointment by newly elected Governor Jerry Brown as state architect. That meant all three IPUD seats would be on the ballot. Ludy had been a stalwart on the board for many years, except for a four-year hiatus after he was elected in 1960 as the county supervisor for West Marin. Notably for the history books, Ludy was part of a renegade faction that successfully ran for supervisor seats on a pledge to stop construction of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Civic Center and to repurpose the partially completed structure as, perhaps, a county hospital. When the divisive issue came to a decisive vote, Ludy surprised everyone by changing course and casting the tie-breaking vote in favor of finishing the project as the seat of Marin County’s government.
Ludy and Purcell endorsed the Inverness committee’s proposal for pursuing public ownership of the water system but asked that others take it on, and they declined to run for re-election in 1975. Thus an entirely new board was elected in November. It consisted of Alan Johnstone, whose father, Bruce, had been the driving force behind the formation of the IPUD in 1948; Richard Plant, a teacher and contractor who is retired today at his home on Vision Road; and Kate Worsley, who resigned a year later after opening the pioneering Papermill organic foods store where Bovine Bakery is today (she was replaced by Arnold Durlacher). The new board voted to increase its size to five members, adding Marjorie Drath, whose late husband, Phil, had stood for Congress on the then-popular Peace & Freedom Party ticket, and Dick Hayes, a popular Little League coach who defiantly welcomed girls on his teams, a move that eventually broke the national Little League’s ban on allowing girls to play.
The board also pursued the annexation of Seahaven and the neighborhoods north of Second Valley in preparation for acquiring the two Citizens-owned water systems, Inverness Water Company and Seahaven Water Company. In June 1979, the voters approved, by a 4-1 margin, a bond issue of up to $750,000 for the purchase and rehabilitation of the water systems.
A problem arose when IPUD opened negotiations with Citizens Utilities. To maximize tax benefits, Citizens insisted on gifting the watershed parcels to the Trust for Public Land. IPUD was opposed, because it was virtually assured that T.P.L. would eventually turn the property over to the Point Reyes National Seashore, and IPUD did not want its watershed lands subject to control from Washington. IPUD proposed the land be given to a local conservation organization, such as the Marin Conservation League, but Citizens refused. Neither side would budge, and by the fall negotiations had come to an end.
In mid-December, with an end-of-year deadline to make a deal looming, Citizens signaled that it would give IPUD one last chance to accept its sale offer. IPUD again declined. On Dec. 28, Citizens caved, agreeing to deed the watershed parcels to the Marin Conservation League, which transferred them to IPUD just a few years later.
Thus with only three days’ notice and no employees, no office, not even a district phone, IPUD found itself on New Year’s Day in the water utility business. George Zigounakis, a Seahaven resident, stepped in to operate the water system, the five directors split up the office and administrative tasks, and the water kept flowing without interruption. It still flows reliably 43 years later.
Wade Holland has been associated with the Inverness Public Utility District since 1975. He was a board member, a board president and the district’s first general manager; he currently fills in part-time as the customer services manager.