MEETING NOTES: Mid-Kings River GSA to seek substantial loan from Kings County; hires new engineer consultant

• Editor’s note: Monserrat Solis covers Kings County water issues for SJV Water through the California Local News Fellowship initiative. 

 

MEETING: MID-KINGS RIVER GROUNDWATER SUSTAINABILITY AGENCY

Dec. 17, 2024 agenda: CLICK HERE

At the board’s Dec. 17 meeting, Chuck Kinney, general manager of Mid-Kings River Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) who also serves as the county’s Community Development Director, will go before the Board of Supervisors in January to borrow funds from the county to cover expenses, including writing a groundwater sustainability plan (GSP), he said. 

Kinney estimates that the GSA will ask for $500,000 to $2 million from the county to fund the GSA for the next two years. 

“We have to work on the numbers,” Kinney told SJV Water Dec. 18.

With a loan from the county, the GSA can look at different avenues to pay it back.

“Once we get a GSP established, and it’s through the approval process, we will work to get a Prop. 218 election conducted and try and garnish support from the community to be able to provide a funding mechanism for this groundwater sustainability agency to conduct and implement that GSP,” Kinney said. 

Prop. 218 is a shorthand reference to elections held per the guidelines of Proposition 218, passed in 1996. Proposition 218 requires government entities, such as groundwater agencies, to hold an election before implementing or increasing fees, including land assessment or pumping fees.

Erik Ureña, Kings County Director of Finance and Mid-Kings treasurer, said he recently obtained the former Mid-Kings financial records, discovering $3,600 in Mid-Kings’ bank account as of July 31. It’s unclear if that amount has changed since.

Ureña said he received a “large box of information”  from previous Mid-Kings managers that he still needs to review.

“For all intents and purposes, the GSA is very low on funds,” Arena said. “The loan that we’re going to ask for in January is very needed.”

New hire

Despite the GSA’s money concerns, Mid-Kings voted 4-0 to spend $332,500 for a two-year contract with Amer Hussain of Geosyntec Consultants, Inc.

GSA board members Richard Fagundes and Mark Kairis were absent from the Dec. 17 meeting.

Geosyntec Vice President and Senior Principal, Hussain, serves as a consultant for three other GSAs within the Tulare Lake subbasin including South Fork Kings, a portion of Tri-County Water Authority and Southwest Kings.

The move to hire Hussain came after the former Mid-Kings GSA collapsed when one of its members, the Kings County Water District, left. 

Former Mid-Kings managers were accused of making decisions without input from local growers. And other GSAs within the Tulare Lake subbasin blamed the agency for putting the region into probation under the state Water Resources Control Board. The former Mid-Kings manager refused to sign a new groundwater plan other GSAs had hoped would stave off probation. But the manager said that plan allowed for too much subsidence, land sinking, which the Water Board had already challenged.

Now, Mid-Kings is managed by Kings County. The board is composed of Supervisors Joe Neves, Richard Valle, Doug Verboon, Rusty Robinson, Fagundes and Hanford City Council Member Kairis. 

On Nov. 5, the GSA appointed nine members to an 11-member landowner committee that will represent growers in the area and advise the board.

How to attend:

The GSA meets at 1 p.m. on the 2nd Tuesday of each month at the Kings County Board of Supervisors chambers, 1400 W. Lacey Blvd, Hanford, or via this link.

 

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