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This article was originally published by\u00a0Fresnoland<\/a>, a nonprofit news site covering Fresno<\/p>\n A new town the size of Fowler was greenlit by the Fresno County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday \u2014 despite no answers on the project\u2019s water supply.<\/p>\n On Monday,\u00a0Fresnoland reported<\/a>\u00a0that Millerton Lake can hold Friant Ranch\u2019s backup water for only one year \u2014 too little to carry the town through a repeat of the 2014-2015 drought. County planners missed the gap because they relied on a 2008 water analysis written before that drought hit.<\/p>\n Tuesday\u2019s hearing was the county\u2019s last chance to fix the problem. Supervisors heard their own lawyer confirm Fresnoland\u2019s reporting on the record \u2014 and unanimously approved the project\u2019s environmental review anyway.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s paper water, and then there\u2019s real water,\u201d Supervisor Luis Chavez said.<\/p>\n The county\u2019s blindspot could leave officials in a public health crisis \u2013 scrambling to find emergency water for thousands of people.\u00a0<\/p>\n The board certified the Ranch\u2019s environmental review once county lawyer Doug Sloan told supervisors that the developer, not the county, would pay to defend the vote in court.<\/p>\n \u201cI think they\u2019ve been adequately addressed to my satisfaction,\u201d Supervisor Garry Bredefeld said of the water questions.<\/p>\n Supervisor Brian Pacheco cast a lone no vote on a later motion related to other zoning changes for the project.<\/p>\n Vote follows patterns of county water problems and state bailouts\u00a0<\/p>\n Fresno County\u2019s foothill subdivisions have a\u00a0track<\/a>\u00a0record<\/a>\u00a0of water failures,<\/a>\u00a0and supervisors acknowledged as much on Tuesday. Supervisor Brian Pacheco said the board had dealt with \u201cissue after issue of water\u201d in the area in recent months. Many members of the public who spoke on Tuesday were worried that the Supervisors were voting themselves into another water mistake.<\/p>\n Initially, Friant Ranch\u2019s lawyers tried to deny Fresnoland\u2019s reporting.<\/p>\n \u201cA newspaper article is not evidence. It\u2019s full of hearsay,\u201d said James Moose, a lawyer for the developer.<\/p>\n \u201cI would just respectfully urge you to approve the project,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But on Tuesday, it was revealed that county counsel Doug Sloan had reached out to the Bureau of Reclamation after Fresnoland reported the issue.<\/p>\n Sloan told the board he had confirmed with the Bureau that the water could not be stored in Millerton Lake for multiple years, as county planning staff had assumed in their staff report.<\/p>\n County staff erroneously claimed Friant Ranch had a \u201cmulti-year surface water supply,\u201d concluding the proposal had a \u201cmore than adequate\u201d plan to address future drought scenarios.<\/p>\n The hearing was a rare look into how county leaders, in real time, reason about conflicting information and risks to public health.\u00a0<\/p>\n Would the county really approve a subdivision knowing that its water analysis was based on bad information?<\/p>\n Yes.<\/p>\n After knowing that the developer would pay any legal bills, the county simply took the developer\u2019s team at their word that everything would work out all right.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you confident that even in a drought situation, you would have ample water supply for those residents?\u201d Chavez asked the developer\u2019s lawyer.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, yes, I am,\u201d Wagner said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The only person on the board who appeared uncomfortable with the whole affair was Pacheco.\u00a0<\/p>\n As the hearing went on, Pacheco, a farmer with a knowledge of water law and regulation, physically grimaced.<\/p>\n \u201cI see our colleagues in Madera are putting successful project after successful project on the map \u2026 it would seem like we should be able to do that on this side,\u201d said Pacheco. \u201cBut in our experience, we haven\u2019t been able to do that yet.\u201d<\/p>\n While Madera County also deals with\u00a0many shades<\/a>\u00a0of water problems, Fresno County\u2019s were truly catastrophic: one subdivision got so bad, its water got\u00a0contaminated with uranium.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s developers, planning, or what the issue is.\u201d<\/p>\n Pacheco voted to certify the final environmental review anyway.<\/p>\n Critics say the county acknowledged key facts that should have opened up the water supply assessment to an updated environmental review \u2013 one that would have required the developers to analyze a 2014-2015 drought scenario. An updated 2022 water memo prepared by the developer did not include new data on water availability, instead copy-and-pasting old data from 2008.<\/p>\n \u201cYour board and your staff have already recognized that there have been changed conditions and new information,\u201d said Radley Reep, a Clovis resident, who works closely with the League of Women Voters, a non-profit that has sued Friant Ranch in the past. \u201cBecause you modified your [environmental review] for that very same purpose.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Reep told the board how he expected Friant Ranch\u2019s fight to end.<\/p>\n \u201cIf this goes to court, the court will overturn you in two seconds for recognizing changed conditions and new information, and not allowing the public to participate in that discussion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article was originally published by\u00a0Fresnoland, a nonprofit news site covering Fresno A new town the size of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-504697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/fresno-bos-pacheco.jpg\")
Fresno County Supervisor Brian Pacheco during Friant Ranch vote Oct. 20, 2026. Gregory Weaver \/ Fresnoland<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Screenshot-from-2023-06-22-10-48-56.webp\")
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