Kern water agency to be co-managed after leadership shakeup
The Kern County Water Agency named two longtime employees to run the powerful entity after the board let its general manager go just one month before his contract was set to expire.
Administrative Operations Manager Nick Pavletich and State Water Project Manager Craig Wallace will co-manage the agency while a recruitment committee begins the search for a new general manager. The two were named as interim managers to take over for Tom McCarthy after a special meeting held Tuesday morning.
Pavletich, who has been with the agency for 24 years, will oversee local activities. Wallace, who has worked at the agency a little more than 10 years, will oversee the agency’s statewide activities with a focus on the Delta Conveyance Project, a tunnel proposed to bring water beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The agency board also announced it would form an advisory committee of board members to work with the co-managers “to ensure stability.”
Local water managers were stunned last week after the agency board fired McCarthy, who had only been on the job since 2020. The move came after numerous special, closed-session meetings were held with an item listed as: “Public Employee Discipline/Dismissal/Release.”
No reason was given other than the board wanted to go in a “new direction.” McCarthy was relieved of his duties immediately following the board’s May 22 vote not to renew his contract, which expires June 30.
This shakeup comes a little more than a year after the agency ousted its longtime attorney Amelia Minaberrigarai.
The top spot at the agency can be difficult.
Whoever takes the reins will be in charge of about 60 employees, a $365 million budget and a large, complicated organization with its fingers in almost every aspect of California water.
The Agency is the second largest contractor on the State Water Project.
Besides agricultural water, it wholesales drinking water supplies to purveyors that serve large sections of east Bakersfield.
It owns rights to high flow water on the Kern River. It is one of six entities that control the massive Kern Water Bank. And it is one of three members that govern the Kern River Groundwater Sustainability Agency, which monitors water tables and can set pumping limits.
The agency also controls the movement of significant amounts of water into and out of the county through its Cross Valley Canal, which can move water east and west from the California Aqueduct, connecting to numerous other canals all the way to central Bakersfield.
