Noting that Kern County residents could suffer “urgent impacts” to their drinking water from continued agricultural groundwater overpumping, staff at the state Water Resources Control Board announced Thursday they are recommending the entire Kern subbasin be put on probation.
Probation is the first step toward a possible state pumping take over. A hearing before the Water Board is set for Feb. 20, 2025.
The finding was a blow to area water managers who had hoped a new groundwater plan submitted in May would address concerns about its 2022 plan, which was deemed inadequate in 2023. Managers of Kern’s 20 groundwater sustainability agencies had worked since then to revamp the plan.
“It appears that there was an extremely limited effort in evaluating the amended 2024 plan,” Dan Bartel wrote in an email of the Water Board staff recommendation for probation. Bartel is General Manager of the Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage District and Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA). The new submission by Kern is essentially one plan with six “chapters” by individual GSAs.
“This 2024 plan is 100 times more protective of groundwater than our 2022 plan and gives Kern a great path to sustainability,” Bartel wrote.
He called the staff recommendation “deeply frustrating.”
In a media call on Wednesday, Natalie Stork, assistant director of the Water Board’s Office for Sustainable Groundwater Management, said that while the probation recommendation was based mostly on Kern’s 2022 groundwater plan, staff had done a preliminary review of the 2024 plan as well.
That new plan does improve on some aspects of how groundwater will be managed, she said, such as coordination among agencies. But it doesn’t go far enough.
Specifically, she told reporters, Kern’s new plan “could allow water levels to drop far below historic lows, in some cases, more than 100 feet below historic lows.”
Chronic decline of groundwater levels is one of three main deficiencies staff listed in its draft report calling for probation. The other two are subsidence, land sinking, and coordination among water agencies on how to measure, monitor and tackle groundwater issues.
All of that added up to “potential urgent impacts to drinking water supplies and domestic wells,” Stork said.
“An analysis we conducted with DWR (the Department of Water Resources) indicates that around 230 domestic wells could go dry in a drought scenario based on recent water level trends. Additionally, we found that over 400 wells would go dry at (groundwater) thresholds proposed in the 2022 groundwater plan.”
Bartel disputed the state’s data on both groundwater levels and at-risk domestic wells.
Groundwater levels of greatest concern are known as “minimum thresholds,” or the lowest level water is allowed to drop without triggering significant action. Kern water managers have sparred with one another over those levels for several years.
But as part of their coordination efforts under the 2024 groundwater plan, managers agreed to set levels more evenly across the subbasin, Bartel wrote in the email.
“Yes, a few MT’s went down because we had to come to a coordinated approach from what we did last time,” he wrote in an email. “Contrary to the what the (Water Board staff) has released about MT’s, they were raised an average of about 40’ from the previous 2022 plan.”
He acknowledged that the average minimum threshold is 30 feet below historic lows, which was done to give water managers flexibility to ramp down overpumping and increase recharge between now and 2040, when the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) mandates aquifers have to be operated sustainably.
“There is no requirement in SGMA that you cannot go under historic lows,” Bartel wrote.
Kern managers also did an impact analysis to see what potential harm the new minimum thresholds could cause to domestic wells.
That analysis shows a total of 77 drinking water wells could be impacted by 2040 if no other projects were implemented or actions taken, such as increasing recharge and finding ways to reduce pumping through internal groundwater markets or other measures. With those projects and actions, however, only 13 drinking wells could be dewatered, according to the 2024 groundwater plan.
Kern water managers also developed what they felt was a robust response to deal with any dry wells and make sure residents have water and wells are repaired. Water Board staff, however, said the domestic well response “lacked details” on whether it would be short or long term.
Staff will issue a final report after the public comment period, which closes Sept. 23.
Kern is one of six San Joaquin Valley subbasins under scrutiny by the Water Board, the enforcement arm of SGMA.
The Tulare Lake subbasin, which covers Kings County, was put on probation April 16, though a Kings County judge recently ruled against some of the state’s measures.
The Tule subbasin, which covers the southern half of Tulare County’s valley portion, goes before the board Sept. 17.
The Kaweah subbasin, which covers the northern half of Tulare County’s flatlands, will go before the board Jan. 5.
The Chowchilla and Delta-Mendota subbasins will go before the board sometime later in 2025.
– SJV Water reporter Jesse Vad contributed to this report
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