The early history of the Senior Canyon Mutual Water Company, and its water rights, can be traced back to 1883 when Judge Hines, a Ventura County judge, settled on 160 acres in what was then known as Senor Canyon and constructed a dam and ditch to appropriate water from the creek, which was then referred to as either Topa Topa Creek or San Antonio Creek. 

Around 1887 Judge Hines died in a horse and buggy accident, and his widow, Alice, then sold the Hines Ranch to E.S. and W.L. Hall. In 1889, the Halls and others sold their water rights to form the Ojai Valley Water Company, which in 1894 was reincorporated as the San Antonio Water Company. 

Throughout this early history there was a protracted legal battle over the water rights to the creek. In 1903, after three trips to the California Supreme Court, the case was finally settled in Ventura County Superior Court with a comprehensive judgment adjudicating all of the flows of San Antonio Creek among the parties in the case. The defendants in the case, the San Antonio Water Company and its members, were predecessors in interest to Senior Canyon Mutual Water Company. The plaintiff’s estate also later became part of the company, giving Senior Canyon all of the water rights adjudicated in the 1903 judgment.

With those water rights from the judgement, five large East End landowners (William G. Hendrickson, Philip Pierpont, M.W. Hollingsworth, J. Myrick, Jr., and H.W. Gorham) incorporated the Senior Canyon Mutual Water Company in 1929, then funded and built the infrastructure necessary to grow citrus and avocado trees in the company’s 3.5 square mile service area.  At the time, there were very few residential homes and Lake Casitas did not exist. 

Shortly after incorporation, the new company approved the construction of a water-producing tunnel high up in Senior Canyon. Similar water tunnels had been built in Montecito and Santa Barbara, so tunneling was a proven way of obtaining new water. Stanford geologist Bailey Willis picked the beginning point of the drilling, and Arnold Long, who had managed similar jobs in Montecito, managed construction. 

Almost immediately, the tunnel increased and helped stabilize the existing surface water supplies. In its history, the tunnel has produced at least 45 gallons per minute, and in rainy times more than 450 gallons per minute.

In the early days, the Senior Canyon Board met monthly and assessed what volume of water could be supplied without charge in that month, with the number of shares held determining how much water each shareholder could receive.  Water use that exceeded that volume was charged an established rate, and that’s how the money to pay the bills was generated.  The water from the canyon flowed by to a small tank above Thacher School, and from there down into homes and ranches. The supply was erratic and depended on temperature and rainfall.  Often, there were times when water was available for only a few hours each day.  Atop the hill next to the tank, a flag was raised and lowered to let shareholders know when they could use water.

In the early 1940s, the company used ponds to store excess canyon water for agriculture, and in the early 1960s the ponds were expanded to form the current reservoir. In the mid-1960s, Lake Casitas was built as a federal Bureau of Land Management project to stimulate agriculture in the Ojai Valley and to provide water security for all valley residents. A connection was established between Senior Canyon and Casitas Municipal Water District (Casitas) that enabled the company to purchase additional Casitas water when needed.

By the early 2000s, there had been scant investment in the maintenance of the company infrastructure. The main steel pipes had rusted and developed significant scale on the inner walls, which decreased flow volumes. The Tunnel suffered a cave in at 2,400 feet, and was structurally compromised and unsafe to enter. The “new” Thacher Tank built in the late 1960s leaked badly and special crews would be called in each year to patch the bottom with tubes of water-based epoxy. There also had been only marginal improvement in the electronic monitoring of our water quality mandated by the State. Leaks in the pipes buried in the ground were extreme and expensive to fix.  Simply put, there was a tremendous amount of deferred maintenance and infrastructure improvement that needed to occur to keep the company operating.  Unfortunately, there was little money to pay for the required work. Around 2005, the Board explored the idea of selling the company to Casitas, but after Casitas required an estimated $5 million for repairs and upgrades before they would purchase the company, Senior Canyon’s shareholders rejected the idea.

In 2015, the Board set out to revitalize the company’s infrastructure and reduce the company’s dependence on Casitas water which was, by far, the greatest expense. For the hot summer months, it was typical for the company to buy 80% of its water from Casitas. To break this dependence, Senior Canyon needed to maximize the supply of its produced water.

The first major project was the replacement of the leaky and undersized Thacher Tank.  A new 708,000 gallon tank was completed in August of 2020 and was funded by a shareholder-approved loan for $500K. The second project was the installation of an electronic monitoring system whereby our operators could remotely assess what was happening throughout the system, including the detection of large leaks. And the third major project—now underway—is the renovation of the Senior Canyon Tunnel, funded by a $2.65 million grant from the State of California.

In the coming months, the Management Committee will create a robust Capital Improvement Program, the goal of which will be to increase our own supply. With the deferred maintenance projects completed and new sources of water established, the board believes that our entire operational and financial picture will change to one with greater security, efficiency and stabilization of costs to run the company.