GOLETA, Calif. _ The defense would devise "plot twists" and add them to their "narrative," the plaintiff's attorney warned. Experts would contribute facts and theories that would aid a pre-written "script." And in the end, it would be the court's job to "solve" the "mystery."
This was no true-crime thriller, no episode of "Law & Order." Rather, it was the first day of a trial involving that television show's famous creator, the ranch that he owns and the liquid gold mine it sits atop.
"This case is about water," the attorney, Carl Blumenstein, said in Santa Barbara Superior Court last month. Dick Wolf's Slippery Rock Ranch, Blumenstein continued, "seeks to take that water _ water that belongs to the public _ and sell it for private gain."
If whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over, five years of drought have transformed California's civil courts into well-worn legal boxing rings. As climate change threatens the state's long-term water future, local water officials and legal experts say water rights have morphed into priceless bounty worth protecting by any means necessary.
That's especially true on the Central Coast, where hotels still tuck drought notices behind the free shampoo, and even upscale restaurants put placards on tables reminding patrons they must ask for water if they want it.
So it should come as no surprise that the celebrity-centered water battle unfolding off State Street is likely to be expensive and has already featured the sort of courtroom theatrics that a Hollywood screenwriter might be apt to steal.
Wolf's 780-acre Slippery Rock Ranch is perched in the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains on an aquifer. The ranch has said it wants to extract water and sell it to cities such as Montecito, Carpinteria and Santa Barbara, according to court documents.
The Goleta Water District sued to stop any such exports, claiming that the ranch's aquifer is connected to the Goleta Groundwater Basin, which the district owns rights to and is located just a few miles south.
If Judge James Herman rules that water from the ranch's aquifer flows to and recharges the water district's basin, the district would be one major step closer to obtaining the injunction it seeks. If Herman rules that the systems are not connected in a significant way, Slippery Rock Ranch would be allowed to sell the water.
Since mid-September, experts have testified about the finer points of this region's hydrogeology. Both sides have insisted that while their own arguments are grounded in science, their opponents' occasionally roam into the realm of fiction.
After Blumenstein finished his opening statement, the ranch's lawyer, Harry Chamberlain, took his turn. In an effort to discredit the opposition's experts, he read selected portions of their depositions aloud.
After reciting one chunk of testimony Chamberlain found particularly shaky, he could not resist.
"If the mystery novel has a title," Chamberlain said, "maybe it's 'Speculation.'"
