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Over one thousand water agencies control, manage, or distribute surface water in the state. These water agencies function as special districts—an unusual political instrument unique to California—and it is this designation that has defined their history, structure, priorities, and current accountabilities. Over the last century, water agencies have been critical to both agricultural and urban development. As a result, they lie today at the social and economic boundaries of the Sierra foothills' urban-rural divide. Expressly founded to benefit the region's farmers and ranchers, the practices of water districts in the north central Sierra are examined and show how water agencies are now quietly facilitating the urbanization of those same rural, agricultural communities. I examine first how agency infrastructure—raw water ditches, water-treatment facilities, hydroelectric generation-plants—is allowing foothill communities to develop to greater densities; and second, how water agencies are potentially becoming increasingly less useful to the agricultural community as the price of raw water threatens to surpass its value to production agriculturalists. Given the political structure of the water agency as special district, it is unclear whether these agencies reflect communities they serve or have themselves helped to define their constituent communities.