What a Water Week

For the month of August, there has been a lot going on in California water. My job for Milk Producers Council is to be the dairy industry’s eyes, ears, and advocate on water supply. I participated in a number of meetings this past week and I thought I would share a bit of what I learned.

On Monday morning, California Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross hosted a virtual meeting with Department of Water Resources (DWR) officials who briefed us on the draft of the Subsidence Best Management Practices document they just released. It was a good opportunity to hear directly from DWR what it is proposing to address subsidence in California. Essentially, their advice is to stop overdrafting. Much easier said than done.

Later Monday, I attended the board meeting of the Greater Kaweah Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GKGSA) in their new office in downtown Visalia. There are a lot of dairies in GKGSA, and much of the GSA is groundwater-only dependent. The board allocated $1 million for a land fallowing program, which will offer a payment of $400 per acre to landowners who will not irrigate their land for a year. There was a question about whether the farmer could harvest a cover crop grown with only precipitation. The answer was yes. GKGSA will provide more information about its land fallowing program at an open house on August 27 at 1 p.m. at its new location, 227 N. West Street, Visalia.

On Tuesday, I attended the El Rico GSA board meeting in Corcoran. This GSA is in the Tulare Lake Subbasin, which was placed on probation by the State Water Board in April of 2024. The State Board has not been enforcing probation due to a preliminary injunction issued by the Superior Court in Kings County in response to a lawsuit filed by the Kings County Farm Bureau against the State Board. There were several interesting topics discussed at the El Rico meeting. The landowners there are required to register their wells, install meters, and report their pumping every quarter. There are a small number of farmers who are refusing to comply. The El Rico board discussed what steps the GSA should take to compel compliance. They did not act at this meeting, but it does appear that there are costs that can be assessed for non-compliance, backed up by legal action, which will certainly increase the pain to landowners who thumb their nose at the GSA rules. Another topic that came up was a response letter El Rico prepared to an article published in SJV Water entitled, “Boswell silent and ‘blank’ as the farming behemoth continues with plans to sink the Tulare Lakebed another 10 feet.” The response letter that was approved by the El Rico board pointed out some errors and mistakes that were in the article, which it asked be corrected by the article’s author. It also highlighted some strong differences El Rico has over policy with some of their neighboring Tulare Lake GSAs.

Later Tuesday, I attended the Mid-Kaweah GSA (MKGSA) board meeting in Tulare. Less fireworks here. The board approved a 2025 transition water allocation of 0.75 acre-feet per acre, which is combined with a native yield allocation of 0.82 acre-feet per acre, for a total of about 1.5 feet of groundwater allocation for 2025. Almost all of Mid-Kaweah GSA irrigated agriculture land is in the Tulare Irrigation District, which has surface water rights to the Kaweah River and also has significant Friant water supplies. The MKGSA board also approved participation in a groundwater banking project investigation with the Greater Kaweah GSA and the Pixley and Lower Tule River GSAs. This joint effort flows out of the Water Blueprint work looking at the prospects of bringing in water from potential urban partners in Southern California and the Bay area. Valerie Kincaid is the attorney for MKGSA. She also represents the Kings County Farm Bureau in their lawsuit against the State Board over the Tulare Lake probation decision. She reported on the Tulare Lake case and stated that the appeals court, which is currently considering the State Board’s appeal of the Preliminary Injunction, has asked the litigants if they want oral argument on that case. Those oral arguments would be held in early October. No word yet on whether the litigants want oral arguments, but this request does indicate that the appeals court is moving toward a decision on the appeal.

On Wednesday, I attended the Shafter Wasco Irrigation District (SWID) board meeting at 9 a.m. SWID annexed about 12,000 acres of previously undistricted land next their district. We have a number of dairies in that annexed area. The big item on the agenda was to formally adopt an updated Groundwater Sustainability Plan in anticipation of a September 17, 2025, State Water Board hearing where the Kern Subbasin is being considered for probation. The Kern Subbasin encompasses over 1 million acres, with about 20 GSAs in the subbasin. When SGMA was passed in 2014, there were millions of acres of undistricted irrigated agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley. Historically, water districts were formed around some sort of a surface water project, providing the organization needed to finance and operate these systems. In the Kern Subbasin, because it is a relatively dry part of the Valley, many water districts were formed to manage the surface water provided by the Kern River and bring in surface supplies from elsewhere. The amount of undistricted land in the Kern Subbasin is relatively small. All of these districts participated in developing Groundwater Sustainability Plans, but given the differences between the districts, which in some ways are competitors, there was not good coordination between the various plans. This lack of coordination was a major reason the Kern Subbasin was sent to the State Board for possible probation. What has happened over the past 12 months has been nothing short of a miracle. The Kern GSAs have put aside their historic disagreements and worked cohesively as a team to establish a consistent and unified approach to setting the Minimum Thresholds to avoid all the undesirable results as proscribed by the SGMA law. They have developed a unified domestic well mitigation program, a unified communications and outreach program, and a unified monitoring program for water levels and water quality. Each of the GSA governing boards are formally adopting the updated GSP in August, and SWID did its part at the Wednesday meeting I attended. They did have a public hearing before adopting the plan. I did complement them on their success.

At 10 a.m., I joined a meeting of the Great Valley Farm Water Partnership (GVFWP) virtually from my pickup parked under a solar roof in the Wasco Walmart parking lot. The GVFWP is a new group made up of farmers from the Delta and farmers from the San Joaquin Valley. I serve as one of the advisors to this group. The GVFWP has identified a number of projects that if accomplished will make a substantial improvement in water supply and quality for Delta communities – and because it frees up constraints in the Delta – it increases the opportunity for more water exports to the Valley. The first project GVFWP is promoting is to resume dredging in the Delta. Around 30 years ago, dredging in a number of important Delta channels was stopped, apparently for environmental reasons. As a result, there has been significant silting up of these channels, which reduces their ability to transport water and also raises the water temperature which is bad for the fish as well as the local farmers. There is significant support for resuming dredging by some state and federal officials. But the permits required and the costs are significant and getting broader political support for this is what the GVFWP is seeking to obtain. The second issue discussed were the benefits of building gates in strategic parts of the Delta to hold back saltwater intrusion in low water outflow periods. Currently, temporary rock barriers are constructed that take a month to install and remove and cost about $7 million each time they are deployed. Here too, there is good support by the state and federal officials for this project, but what is needed is political and economic support. Having a formal organization that encompasses both Delta and Valley leaders is a very important step to making more rapid progress on these less flashy, but important impediments to water supply for both areas.

At 12:15 p.m., I headed to the office of the Semitropic Water Storage District for a 12:30 p.m. meeting. They always serve a tasty lunch to everyone who attends. We have a number of dairies in this GSA also. I saw the same presentation I saw in the morning at SWID. The nuance in Semitropic is that they have a robust water banking program. Two of their major water banking partners, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and Valley Water from the Bay Area, sent letters to the State Board stating how important these banking projects are to the urban areas that depend on them for water reliability. There is nearly 2 million acre-feet of water stored in the various Kern water storage projects. If the State Board were to place the Kern Subbasin in probation, it would cast a big cloud on the status of these water banks. Semitropic also held a public hearing before adopting the updated GSP. I again spoke up and complemented them and noted the huge value to the whole state of California that the Kern Subbasin provides, not only in the agriculture output, but also the water banking function for the urban areas.

At 2 p.m., I got on the road and joined a virtual Water Blueprint leadership meeting. I am Vice Chair of the Water Blueprint, and the leadership meetings are where we review items to cover in our board meetings and generally check in to make sure our various initiatives are moving forward. We have John Herrick, the executive director of the South Delta Water Agency coming to the Blueprint board meeting next week to talk about the Delta from the perspective of the Delta. Building understanding and finding common ground between Delta and Valley communities is a very worthwhile endeavor.

On Thursday morning, I attended the Pixley Irrigation District (PID) board meeting. While the Tule Subbasin was placed in probation last September by the State Board, both Pixley and Lower Tule River Irrigation Districts were encouraged by the State Board members to pursue an exclusion from the groundwater use and fee provisions of probation. These two districts have been working hard with the State Board staff to make changes to their GSPs that will enable them to receive this exclusion. This week, the boards received an update on all the changes that were made to satisfy the State Board staff. The Pixley board and the Lower Tule River board last Tuesday formally adopted those changes and are formally requesting the State Board for an exclusion. There were other reports at the Pixley meeting. They were able to buy 14,000 acre-feet of surface water that they delivered to farmers in June and July. Their well registration program is ongoing. All farmers in Pixley are required to register their wells and put meters on them. So far, only 52% of the wells have been registered. This program is necessitated by the commitment Pixley has made to slow down and eventually eliminate subsidence. Having detailed information about their wells is critical to designing a pumping management plan that will address subsidence without completely stopping pumping. It was reported that the technical team working on stopping subsidence on the Friant Canal is recommending limiting pumping within three miles of the canal. This will greatly impact farming in that area. Pixley has hired EKI consultants to specifically work on the subsidence issue. They will be giving an update on their initial findings to the stakeholder group next week.

At 1 p.m. on Thursday, I had a virtual Water Blueprint finance meeting. So far, so good, but we could use more financial support.

At 1:30 p.m., I signed onto the Chino Ag Pool meeting. In 2000, a 30-year Peace Agreement was signed between the cities and agriculture. That agreement can be renewed by either side for another 30 years with 5-year notice. That 5-year notice deadline is coming up in the next few months. At this meeting, the Ag Pool voted to exercise its right to unilaterally extend the Peace Agreement for another 30 years until 2060. Agriculture continues to be an active participant in Chino Basin Watermaster. Agriculture has a safe yield of 82,800 acre-feet per year in the Chino Basin Judgement. Agriculture, including the remaining dairies, are using – and have used – much less than this amount over the years. What is unused by agriculture is transferred, without cost to the cities. This arrangement has facilitated the continuation of agriculture in the Chino Basin at the same time allowing the cities to grow and flourish.

Geoff Vanden Heuvel

Director of Regulatory and Economic Affairs