Some Perspective on the Kings County Farm Bureau Lawsuit Against the State Water Board
- Geoff Vanden Heuvel
- 18 hours ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 16 hours ago
The State Court of Appeals issued two rulings this week on the Kings County Farm Bureau (KCFB) lawsuit against the State Water Resources Control Board (State Board). KCFB filed suit over actions the State Board took in April of 2024, which placed the Tulare Lake Subbasin in probation under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). You can read the press release on the Appeals Court decision from KCFB here. You can read some news stories about the decisions here and here.
From my perspective, this lawsuit has been an important and valuable effort, not just for the stakeholders and communities in the Tulare Lake Subbasin, but also for all of the other subbasins that were subject to State Board jurisdiction.
The SGMA law required that all of the critically overdrafted subbasins in the state had to submit Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs) to the Department of Water Resources (DWR) by January 31, 2020. Everyone complied with that requirement. DWR then took two years to evaluate all those plans. It approved a few, and sent the rest back for improvements, with about a six-month deadline for resubmitting those improved plans. After that round of review, DWR approved some more plans, but deemed six subbasins as having an “inadequate” plan, and these six were sent to the State Board for potential probation. Those six are all in the San Joaquin Valley. The State Board then began communicating with the subbasins, and in addition to the deficiencies identified by DWR in the original evaluations, began adding their own concerns to the list of things these subbasins had to address in their GSPs. The important thing to remember here is that there was NO PRECEDENT for how to handle this regulation because SGMA is a completely new law. Neither the State Board nor DWR had ever done this before. So, both sides of this equation – the regulators and the regulated – had no history of how to handle the requirements and responsibilities the Legislature had outlined in the SGMA law.
The State Board decided to make Tulare Lake Subbasin first up. They scheduled a hearing to consider probation for April 16, 2024. They checked the boxes of holding workshops and mailing postcards to landowners, and the State Board staff made its recommendation to the State Board – put Tulare Lake Subbasin on probation and with that, require meters, pumping reporting, and fees, and because there is no approved plan for the subbasin, no area can be considered for an exclusion.
The Tulare Lake Subbasin has five GSAs. El Rico GSA is large and is dominated by the J.G. Boswell Company. The Southwest Kings GSA is not large, but it is controlled by John Vidovich. South Fork Kings GSA is made up of a lot of smaller farmers around the town of Lemoore, and the Mid-Kings River GSA is made up of a lot of small farms around the town of Hanford. Tri-County GSA makes up a small piece of the southeast corner of the Subbasin. These are not easy groups to coordinate. They have no history of having to work together, and what history they have has not always been a happy one. But they did have a plan, and right up to the April 16, 2024, hearing date they were working very hard on presenting a joint GSP that met the requirements asked by the State Board staff. What they needed was a little more time. Remember, they were first in a totally new program. But the State Board was not going to give them time, voting 5-0 to place the Tulare Lake Subbasin on probation, and immediately requiring meters, reporting, and fees with no exclusions for anybody.
What the Kings County Farm Bureau did in filing its lawsuit and in obtaining a preliminary injunction was that it bought time for the Tulare Lake community to get their act together. The rebuke of the trial court of the State Board also had the effect of modifying the approach of the State Board for the next subbasin in line, which was the Tule Subbasin. The Tule Subbasin probationary hearing was scheduled for September of 2024. While ultimately the Tule Subbasin was placed on probation, the metering order was modified from what had been imposed on Tulare Lake, the timeframes for compliance were more reasonable, and two Tule GSAs were excluded from having to report and pay fees, with another two GSAs being told they had a chance at also qualifying for an exclusion.
The Kaweah Subbasin hearing was next, scheduled for December of 2024. With the extra time, and I would argue with a more reasonable and tempered attitude from the State Board, the Kaweah folks were able to make the changes to their GSP that allowed the State Board to cancel the Kaweah probationary hearing and signal that the Kaweah Subbasin had made sufficient progress to head back to DWR. The Kern Subbasin was next in February, and while their probationary hearing was held, it was continued for six months, which was enough time for the Kern Subbasin GSAs to get an acceptable plan in place. The Chowchilla Subbasin made important changes to its GSP and was sent back to DWR in June of 2025.
The key to all of this subsequent success is time and reasonableness. I know of no responsible official at any GSA that doesn’t genuinely want to comply with the requirements of SGMA. But this is hard and painful work. The Legislature understood this when they phased in full compliance with the SGMA requirements over 25 years. DWR and the State Board have been given responsibilities to carry out the law. That they would get everything exactly right the first time defies what we all know about human behavior. Everyone has a role to play, including the Kings County Farm Bureau who had the guts and the resources to hold the State Board accountable.
Where do we go from here? The Tulare Lake GSAs have made very good use of the extra time the preliminary injunction gave them. They have all updated their GSPs and are ready to engage with the State Board staff on coming into compliance with the requirements of SGMA. Hopefully, the State Board will engage in good faith and recognize the tremendous progress that has been made. And despite the headline, the trial court judge still has jurisdiction in this lawsuit. The appeals court reversed the preliminary injunction but sent the case back to the trial court with instructions for further consideration.
The road to groundwater sustainability is a long and difficult one. When the history of this SGMA implementation period is written, the actions of the Kings County Farm Bureau deserve more than a passing mention.
Additional Reading Materials on the KCFB SGMA Lawsuit
Geoff Vanden Heuvel
Director of Regulatory and Economic Affairs