Are Kings County farmers getting a bad rap from bad data?

• Editor’s note: Monserrat Solis covers Kings County water issues for SJV Water through the California Local News Fellowship initiative. 

Kings County farmers are either underreporting how much groundwater they pump – by a lot. Or bad data is to blame.

According to the state Water Resources Control Board, farmers in the Tulare Lake subbasin, most of Kings County, have reported less than 35% of their actual groundwater extractions under a mandate aimed at measuring how much is being pumped in the critically over drafted region.

Baloney, said one groundwater agency, pegging compliance at closer to 90%.

“Bad data would be my official statement,” said El Rico Groundwater Sustainability Agency chair Jeof Wyrick at the board’s August 11 meeting. “We see that it’s closer to 90(%) plus and there’s a few (wells) that we don’t know about but they’re those small parcels.

“The state board also said that we have over 150 domestic wells that are out there and I think they did a domestic wells per acre average that is made up out of thin air.”

There are only 12 domestic wells in El Rico’s boundaries, Wyrick said.

Early captures of the state’s pumping data, provided to SJV Water, also showed the First Baptist Church of Hanford supposedly pumped nearly 2.5 million acre feet during about a year and a half.

The data dispute has arisen over pumping that was required to be reported to the Water Board via its online portal called GEARS. 

Well owners were required to report how much they had pumped from July 2024 to Dec. 2025 as part of probationary measures imposed by the Water Board after local agencies failed to present a plan to protect local groundwater levels and stop subsidence in the region, among other requirements.

Water Board spokesperson Edward Ortiz said while some data is still being cleaned, the state’s assertion of low compliance is based on comparing what farmers reported through the GEARS portal with pumping amounts listed in annual reports submitted to the Department of Water Resources for the Tulare Lake subbasin. 

The Water Board also compared the GEARS data to OpenET, a public platform that uses satellite imagery to measure evapotranspiration, how much irrigation water evaporates and how much is transpired, or released, by crops, according to Ortiz. 

“The compliance rate for Tulare Lake is less than 35% when comparing groundwater extractions in acre-feet (AF) reported to the State Water Board to AF reported to DWR in the basin’s annual report,” Ortiz wrote in an email.

For water year 2025, which ran from October 2024 to September 2025, 392,833 acre feet was pumped in Tulare Lake, according to the DWR’s annual reports. 

GEARS data looking at extractions by wells, however, show farmers reported pumping just 100,700 acre feet for the same time frame, according to the Water Board’s information online. 

“This water report calculation is satellite, all except what is for sure usage of surface water and is calculated with more usage than we actually used? How can the fees applied be accurate?”

– Comment from Kings County landowner on Water Board GEARS reporting form

“I would put an asterisk next to a lot of the data around the groundwater extractions,” said Dan Vink, principal partner at Six-33 Solutions, a water and natural resources firm in Visalia.

He added that he was impressed with the number of landowners who registered with the state.

However, Vink noted, when the state first put the data online, his firm calculated 8 million acre feet of groundwater had supposedly been pumped from the Tulare Lake and Tule subbasins for the reporting period of July 2024-Dec. 2025. 

“That’s just way more than you can actually use,” Vink said. “So, I’m not too confident in the overall numbers. I think a lot of that has to get refined.”

He wondered if groundwater use was confused with surface water applied to crops.

“If they’re basing that just on ET (evapotranspiration), I’m not sure that’s an accurate number because ET takes into account total water applied including surface water,” Vink said. 

According to the Water Board’s information online, Tulare Lake farmers reported 1,920,244.40 acre feet of water use via ET data.

But several landowners warned the state in comments on their reports that total irrigation amounts were higher than what they pumped because they also used surface water.

“These numbers are all higher than our actual usage due to being done by satellite, the only exact is our surface water,” one landowner wrote. “Please let us know how the adjustments will be made for the fees that will show due.”

“These numbers are all higher than our actual usage due to being done by satellite, the only exact is our surface water. Please let us know how the adjustments will be made for the fees that will show due.”

– Comment from Kings County landowner on Water Board GEARS reporting form

Another landowner warned of the same issue: “How can fees applied be accurate?”

Water Board staff did request surface water data from Kings County GSAs in – likely to compare groundwater and surface water use.

But GSAs don’t track surface water so that information couldn’t be provided, explained Amer Hussain, the engineering consultant for three of the five Kings County GSAs.

If El Rico is right and reported pumping was much higher than is reflected in the Water Board’s data, that needs to be corrected quickly, said Geoff Vanden Heuvel, director of regulatory affairs for the Milk Producer Council and vice-chairman of the Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley, who attended the El Rico meeting.

Otherwise, the Tulare Lake subbasin will look like a “lawless region.”

“There is a public perception out there and I think unresponded to errors have a long life,” Vanden Heuvel said.

He pushed the board to submit a letter to the Water Board to deny the low compliance rate.

“You’re going to be in front of the state board at some point and you don’t want inaccurate data points that make you look like you’re the bad guy out there.”

The board agreed and will send a letter to the Water Board through the region’s point of contact, Staci Ann Silva.

Farmers in the Tulare Lake subbasin were required to register wells at $300 each, pay $20 per acre foot pumped and report extractions after the region was placed on probation in 2024.

Farmers began reporting their pumping May 1 but the fees are still in legal limbo. A hearing on the fees is scheduled to be held in Kings County Superior Court Oct. 6.