There’s nothing like a common enemy to bring warring parties together.
That was never more true than with the City of Bakersfield and Kern Delta Water District, which agreed this week to form a joint Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA).
As part of the alliance, they both agreed to drop long-running lawsuits against each other.
And Kern Delta even pledged to back the city’s effort to convince the State Water Resources Control Board to grant it ownership of a chunk of Kern River water that Kern Delta forfeited in 2007. (That forfeiture, by the by, was the result of yet another lawsuit in which the city was a party.)
The lawsuits each agreed to dismiss were also tied to Kern River water.
Kern Delta had sued over the city’s environmental documents detailing how it would run that forfeited water down the river. The city had sued over Kern Delta’s plan to recharge more of its river water within its district.
