Calling the state’s review of the Kern subbasin’s newest groundwater plan “cursory,” a representative of the agencies that wrote the plan detailed how it will protect drinking water wells, improve water quality and restore the water table during a workshop held Monday.
This was the first of two public workshops to discuss Kern’s groundwater plan. The next will be held Thursday, Aug. 29, at 5:30 p.m. at Hodels in Bakersfield. It will be in person only with no online access.
The stakes are very high as the subbasin is facing possible probation by the state Water Resources Control Board at a hearing set for Feb. 20, 2025.
Probation is the first step toward a possible state pumping take over and comes with requirements for farmers to meter and register their wells at $300 each, report extractions and pay $20 per acre foot pumped.
Water Board staff has recommended the board place the Kern subbasin, with no exemptions, on probation based largely on the region’s 2022 plan, according to a report issued in July. Very little was mentioned in that report about the 2024 plan, which was submitted to the Water Board in May.
“The 2024 plan…was a complete and comprehensive overhaul of the 2022 plan,” said Anona Dutton, who represents the Kern subbasin technical group and is a geologist with consulting firm EKI, Inc. “We did feel like there was a real missed opportunity when the staff report…spent 200 pages focused on the obsolete 2022 plan and only 1.5 pages provided a very cursory review of the current plan.”
She added that locals were unable to replicate several maps shown by Water Board staff at Monday’s workshop showing that minimum groundwater levels, known as minimum thresholds, would likely drop groundwater levels significantly across the subbasin.
Dutton invited staff to provide more information about the data used to generate those maps. She also pledged to get more information to state staff about operations of the region’s recharge and banking programs, which was noted as “vague” by in the staff report.
During her presentation , Dutton said minimum thresholds in the 2024 plan had been raised by an average 20 feet compared to the 2022 plan. Using those thresholds, 5,000 computer models had been run under different climate scenarios to determine potential harm to drinking water wells.
The models showed: “On average, 103 drinking water wells have the potential to be impacted between now and 2040. That’s 103 wells across 1.8 million acres. That’s 2% of the domestic and municipal water supply,” Dutton said.
Along with a new, greatly upgraded, dry-well-response program in the 2024 plan, those impacts “…do not represent a significant or unreasonable impact and are less than other basins (the Department of Water Resources) has approved,” according to Dutton.
State board staff acknowledged the Kern subbasin had made great strides in its 2024 plan, primarily in the realm of better coordination and communication among the region’s 20 groundwater agencies.
But there are still problems.
The domestic well response program mentioned by Dutton, for instance, lacks details and has yet to be implemented, according to previous state comments.
And minimum groundwater thresholds were actually set lower, in some areas, compared to the 2022 plan, according to Jeevan Jayakody, a senior engineering geologist with the Water Board’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Office.
“In some cases, thresholds were lowered by more than 100 feet under the 2024 plan,” he said. “That seems far less protective of beneficial users than in previous plans.”
He calculated those lower thresholds would result in a total of 9.3 million acre feet less water in the basin than was there in the base year of 2015.
The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act was passed in 2014 and mandates that critically overdrafted areas, including most of the San Joaquin Valley, bring aquifers back into balance by 2040.
Several members of the public spoke after the presentations, including Chad Givens, Mayor of Shafter, who said local groundwater agencies have worked well with the city and he felt the 2024 plan was very protective of domestic needs. He noted that a large portion of Shafter’s residents, many disadvantaged, rely on ag for a living and probation would be a huge economic hit not just to farmers, but everyone they employ
“On behalf of the City of Shafter, I urge the Water Board and staff to engage with the local (groundwater sustainability agencies) and to be mindful of the detrimental impacts probation would have on our local communities that are already facing financial hardship.”
The public may comment on the staff’s probation recommendation report through Sept. 22. A final report will be released in January 2025, with the hearing to be held Feb. 20, 2025.
