Patty Poire, President, Kern County Farm Bureau
At the State Water Board June 21st meeting, Kern County ranked No.4 based on the board’s prioritizing system, which includes basin overdraft, drinking water impacts, subsidence impacts, water quality degradation, and implementation and coordination under the Sustainable Groundwater Development Act (SGMA).
This means that around April 2024, the Kern subbasin will be looking at a State Water Board Probationary Hearing to determine if the Kern basin should be classified as probationary. The state developed “frequently asked questions,” which states that if GSAs opt to revise and resubmit one or more Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs) before a probationary hearing is held, Board staff may review the updated GSPs—their review could inform the Board’s decision on whether to place a basin on probation. You might ask, as a landowner, ‘How does this affect me specifically?’ Well, if the basin is declared probationary, you will receive a letter from the state requiring that you start reporting your extractions and register your well in addition to paying for the extractions and registration. The state also has the authority to require that you place a meter on your well.
How can you, as a landowner, participate in the probationary hearing? The State Water Board will mail a notice of a hearing to anyone who pumps water from the basin using publicly available information at least 60 days before the public hearing. If the schedule for Tulare Lake basin is kept, the Kern subbasin landowners should expect to receive the public hearing notice around December 2023.
The State Board staff presented steps toward a hearing to provide a process to follow.
It is up to you as landowners how the basin deals with this. The Kern subbasin is approximately 326,000 acre-feet in overdraft per year, and that overdraft does not belong to one district, but most water districts in the Kern subbasin are in some amount of overdraft.
Where are you with discussing overdraft with your water district? At this time, those GSPs that were approved had “glide paths” to sustainability that provided DWR and the state the ability to understand how sustainability would be achieved by 2040. A “glide path” can be achieved via demand reduction or new water supplies; however, either one needs to cover the overdraft every year going forward, and both agencies (DWR and State) are not going to approve any GSPs waiting to start the glide path until 2035. As you know, I am not a fan of SGMA, but, unfortunately, it is not going away, and having landowners engaged with me is the only way the Kern subbasin will be successful. If the State Water Board holds the probationary hearing and determines that the Kern subbasin is not able to coordinate and update its GSPs adequately, then the State will begin the process of working on an interim plan. You don’t want to go there!
Of all the legislation that has burdened agriculture, this is the one that I believe will have the most impact only because the State has reduced the reliability of water deliveries for environmental reasons in the Delta and overdrafted the Kern subbasin. If the reliability had maintained 89% prior to 2000, the Kern subbasin would not be in this situation, especially since the water districts have been proactive for decades in recharge efforts which is evident today in this 2023 wet year. But and there is a but, the Kern subbasin is 326,000 acre-feet of overdraft, and we must deal with it.
