State Board Rejects Exclusion Requests

On Tuesday afternoon, the State Water Resources Control Board spent more than four hours considering requests from eight Tule Subbasin groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) to be excluded from the SGMA probation requirements – specifically, the requirements to report groundwater pumping and pay state fees tied to that pumping. See the next article for a meeting recap.

For many landowners, this hearing made SGMA probation feel more real than ever – it is the first time some California growers are confronting the prospect of writing a probation-related check directly to the State Board. In the Tule area, producers say SGMA compliance and GSA-imposed rules have already cost millions of dollars and significantly reduced access to groundwater. Those reductions have affected land values and, in turn, lowered borrowing capacity – raising concerns about the financial viability of some operations.

Against that backdrop, the additional State Board fee – collectively estimated at up to $12 million per year for this group – was widely viewed as punitive. Board members emphasized that the charge is required by law and is intended to recover the costs of administering the probation process, not to serve as a penalty. Even so, for those facing the bill, it does not feel that way.

The immediate question is what comes next. In the Tulare Lake Subbasin, the Kings County Farm Bureau sued the State Board and was able to delay the process through litigation. In that case, the GSAs were less organized and had not yet implemented the level of costs and restrictions now in place in the Tule Subbasin, making the circumstances meaningfully different.

Conditions in Tule are more challenging: subsidence is higher profile, surface water supplies are limited (and may become even more constrained), and the basin is further along in implementation. The current strategy among Tule GSAs is to produce a unified Groundwater Sustainability Plan for the entire subbasin – an approach that helped both the Kern and Delta-Mendota subbasins escape the clutches of the State Board. By most accounts, the Tule GSAs are already making meaningful progress toward that goal.

Looking ahead, reducing subsidence without severely damaging the local economy will likely require significant outside investment in irrigation efficiency to reduce deep aquifer pumping. State and federal partners have a role to play – and stakeholders argue it should be a constructive one. Farmers in Tule are resilient, but this was a tough week.

Groundwater pumpers in the Tulare Lake and

Tule subbasins can get personal help with GEARS at in-person office hours.

April 29, 3:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m., Corcoran 

Veteran’s Memorial Building,

1000 Van Dorsten Ave, Corcoran

April 30, 10 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., Lemoore 

Veterans Hall,

411 West D St., Lemoore

April 30, 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m., Allensworth

Allensworth Elementary

3320 Young Road, Earlimart

Geoff Vanden Heuvel

Director of Regulatory and Economic Affairs