Julian had four or five wells in the 1970s. A county planner surveyed the water capacity for Julian and indicated that it was unlikely that Julian would ever have enough inexpensive water to sustain very large-scale development. During a period of drought, the community of Julian was compelled by the San Diego County supervisors to obey a moratorium on development until a 30,000 gallon waste treatment plant could reduce the risk that a developing Julian’s sewage output might pollute the San Diego River. Julian’s water supply became largely dependent on a single well owned by a local property owner named Jerry Zweig, as the community’s water board-owned resources were depleted in a drought in the 1990s and were severely limited by contamination as a defunct Chevron station contaminated three of the eight publicly owned water wells into the late 1980s.