Groundwater allocation workshops open for Hanford-area well owners

Workshops explaining how groundwater pumping will be tracked and allocated for Hanford-area landowners and growers will be held this week.

After passing its groundwater pumping allocation policy in December, the Mid-Kings River Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) will hold two workshops to explain its policies and how groundwater usage will be tracked.

The first workshop will be held today, March 23, from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. online only. The second will be held in-person on Wednesday, March 25, from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Kings County Ag Commissioner’s Multipurpose room, 680 Campus Drive.

Registration for the virtual event is encouraged and can be found here. 

Pumping allocation policies, which mandate how much farmers can pump under different conditions, are at the heart of Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) compliance. SGMA requires overdrafted regions bring aquifers into balance by 2040.

Allocations are based on the area’s “safe yield,” or the amount that can be pumped without causing negative effects, such as drying up domestic wells or causing land to sink.

On Dec. 16, the Mid-Kings board approved a pumping allocation of 1.43 acre feet per acre of land – a controversial move considering most of its neighboring GSAs allocated less than half that amount to their landowners as a base allocation.

Mid-Kings engineering consultant Amer Hussain, however, said he was prepared to defend the allocation to the state Water Resources Control Board when the time came. The Water Board placed the Tulare Lake subbasin, which covers most of Kings County, on probation in 2024 for lacking an adequate groundwater plan to protect domestic wells and guard against subsidence.

Under probation, farmers are required to meter and register wells at $300 each, report extractions to the state beginning May 1 and pay $20 per acre foot pumped. 

The region’s five GSAs have been setting pumping allocations and other policies in hopes the state will let them off probation.

“We think this is a good start,” Hussain said of Mid-Kings’ allocation. “We’ve based this on the best information we have to date and we are comfortable that we can defend these values to the state,” he said at the December meeting. 

Pumping allocations for the other four GSAs in the Tulare Lake subbasin, which covers most of Kings County, are:

• South Fork Kings GSA, .86 acre feet per acre of land. 
• Southwest Kings GSA, .66 acre feet per acre. 
• Tri-County Water Authority, .66 acre feet per acre.
• El Rico GSA, 2 acre feet per acre through 2029, decreasing .50 acre feet every five years.

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