A major water banking proposal northwest of Bakersfield that won coveted Proposition 1 funding in 2018, was hit by two lawsuits earlier this month, one claiming it is nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing intent on selling Kern River water to southern California.
The City of Bakersfield and the Kern County Water Agency filed separate complaints Feb. 2 against the Kern Fan Groundwater Storage Project seeking to have the project’s recently approved environmental impact report deemed inadequate.
The proposed Kern Fan project is headed jointly by Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage District and the Irvine Ranch Water District.
That puts the Kern County Water Agency in the awkward position of suing one of its own member units, a move that may be unprecedented in the agency’s 60-year history. The agency administers the State Water Project contract on behalf of 13 agricultural water districts including Rosedale-Rio Bravo.
The agency’s lawsuit alleges the Kern Fan EIR didn’t adequately study potential impacts the project may have on the delivery of state water to the agency’s other member districts.
Despite the lawsuits, Rosedale-Rio Bravo maintains Kern Fan will be a net water benefit for Kern County and California.
“This win-win project was selected for (Proposition 1) funding by the California Water Commission because it helps California solve environmental constraints in the (Sacramento-San Joaquin) Delta, on which Kern County is extremely dependent, and brings more water into our county that would otherwise flow out to the ocean,” wrote Rosedale-Rio Bravo’s Assistant General Manager Dan Bartel in an email.
The project basics are that Rosedale-Rio Bravo and Irvine will recharge up to 100,000 acre feet of water on 1,300 acres north of Stockdale Highway and west of Highway 43.
That water will be purchased by Irvine and banked in Kern Fan, with half remaining in Kern. And Rosedale would bank surplus water in wet years from a variety of sources, including the Kern River. The banked water could then be withdrawn and delivered elsewhere, such as Irvine.
That was a no go for Bakersfield.
“The City of Bakersfield is committed to protecting the Kern River and this project raises some concerns,” Colin Pearce, the city’s water attorney wrote in an email regarding the city’s lawsuit. “At the very least the districts should have honestly and completely identified and addressed those impacts, and our concerns, in the EIR.”
In comment responses in the final EIR, Kern Fan proponents write that the project “does not include any transfer of local water supplies to (Irvine) nor does it propose any out-of-county water sales or transfers at all.”
If any such transfer of were contemplated, it would require a separate environmental review and be subject to all legal constraints on river water, according to the EIR.
It was surplus water that caught the Kern County Water Agency’s eye.
Part of the Kern Fan project would include storing up to 25,000 acre feet in an “ecosystem account,” that could be used by the Department of Water Resources to aid fish species in the delta.
How that would work is, DWR would deposit water into the ecosystem account in flush years then “withdraw” the water in dry times by keeping that amount in the delta for fish.
The ecosystem account was a major factor in helping the $171-million Kern Fan project secure more than $67 million in public funding from Proposition 1, which was passed by voters in 2014.
“(The ecosystem account) gives regulatory agencies the ability to call on this water and use it to meet quality and temperature standards,” Rosedale-Rio Bravo’s General Manager Eric Averett told SJV Water in September. “Maybe there’s a salinity standard they need to meet by releasing more water. Under this program, that water won’t come out of (State Water Project) contractors’ allotment, it will come out of this project.”
However, the Kern County Water Agency notes in its complaint, that excess state water, known as “Article 21” water, is usually made available to existing contractors, such as the agency and its districts.
That makes the ecosystem account a new competitor, which the Kern County Water Agency contends wasn’t properly analyzed by the Kern Fan EIR.
Though the agency is suing based partly on that issue, it never raised that issue in comments on the EIR, according to a Jan. 25 letter from Kern Fan to the agency.
This isn’t only hurdle faced by the Kern Fan project.
Concerns arose last summer about contamination of banked groundwater by 1,2,3-TCP, a carcinogenic left over of a nematode pesticide that is now rife in valley groundwater.
While TCP was found in some Rosedale-Rio Bravo facilities last year, it didn’t appear to be an “existential threat” to the project, Rosedale’s attorney Todd Robins previously told SJV Water.
TCP did stymie deliveries of banked water from Arvin-Edison Water Storage District to Metropolitan Water District of Southern California last year and had the giant water agency rethinking future banking projects in the valley.
