After several rounds of musical chairs in front of a standing-room only audience, a groundwater agency that had been blamed for putting Kings County into probationary status with the state was reconstituted and launched anew Monday night.
“Tonight’s the night we come together,” said Kings County Supervisor Doug Verboon, who, along with his fellow supervisors and the vice mayor of Hanford make up the new six-member board of the Mid-Kings River Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA).
Chuck Kinney, director of the Kings County Community Development Agency, will act as the GSA’s General Manager.
“One thing I want to get across is how extremely hard it was to get these three entities in one room in one night,” Verboon told SJV Water, referring to the Board of Supervisors, City of Hanford and the Kings County Water District. “If we hadn’t done this, the state would have been there at midnight. This had to get done.”
Those three entities had made up the previous iteration of the Mid-Kings GSA under a joint powers agreement. But that entity imploded in May when the Kings County Water District pulled out of the agreement.
Mid-Kings was essentially defunct and left a huge hole in the center of Kings County uncovered by a GSA, which isn’t allowed under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
So, the county, city and area growers had to act quickly to re-establish the GSA under a new joint powers agreement that includes just the county and City of Hanford. Costs will be split 89% county and 11%Hanford.
The consequences of all this procedural maneuvering are serious and evoked a lot of passion in the crowd of growers.
Grower Mike LaSalle chastised members of all three entities, but had especially harsh words for Kings County Water District board members Barry McCutcheon and Ernest Taylor.
“The water district has a long tradition in Kings County, and those founding members would be rolling over in their graves if they saw what you’ve been doing,” he said.
There were at least five Kings County Sheriff’s deputies on hand at the meeting, but nothing more than some gruff comments and name-calling erupted.
The Mid-Kings GSA was seen as the skunk at the garden party in April when its former General Manager Dennis Mills refused to sign off on a county-wide groundwater plan to present to the Water Resources Control Board before the region’s probationary hearing.
Mills noted the draft plan allowed for another 10 feet of subsidence, land sinking, which he felt would not fly with the Water Board.
Without a new plan to consider, the Water Board placed the region on probation, which means water managers have a year to write a new plan. Meanwhile, growers were supposed to meter and register wells at $300 each and pay $20-per-acre-foot pumped. Those requirements have been delayed pending the outcome of a lawsuit against the state by the Kings County Farm Bureau.
But frustration and distrust of Mid-Kings GSA among growers started even earlier, when the GSA proposed fees of $25 per acre and up to $95 per acre foot of water pumped. The GSA had hoped that money would aid in projects to decrease pumping demand and bring in more water but growers overwhelmingly rejected the fees saying the GSA hadn’t been transparent about the need for that money.
Grower La Salle said board members must understand how to work with farmers before asking for more money.
“All you did was set off a hornet’s nest, and I understand you’re pissed off that that election failed. But to make matters worse, you all resigned,” he said in reference to the former Mid-Kings board members. “That’s like being invited to a friend’s house, he insults you and you throw a stick of dynamite in the house as you leave. Come on guys, you can do better than that.”
The newly re-formed Mid-Kings GSA will revisit the fee issue through a Proposition 218 election, Verboon said.
This time around, though, he said the GSA will form a committee of landowners and he is asking landowners to sit on the county’s water commission. He said water users of all types should be represented, including those with surface water allocations and those who are groundwater-dependent, those with shallow wells and deep wells.
Looking to the future, Verboon said nothing is going to happen overnight, including solving subsidence.
Though Mid-Kings didn’t agree to the draft plan, Verboon said Mills still submitted it to the state after the April 16 probation hearing, and that water board staff are reviewing it.
“It’s 1,400 pages, and I haven’t read it,” he said. “But If it’s something the state says they can work on with us, we can implement it to the best of our abilities. But people are going to have to realize that they’re going to have to give up a little bit here and there to get this done.”
Verboon’s positivity was hard to match at Monday’s meeting, however.
“I hope there’s a way for them to not be adversarial and work together,” said John Warmerdam of Kings Orchards LLC.
If the county’s various business interests cling to the status quo, though, there would be no option but failure, he said.
“My personal opinion is that we can’t live with five GSAs. This whole process is a study in geology, psychology, hydrology and consensus seeking. Every possible problem you could have in the world, we have in this situation,” Warmerdam said.
But Verboon is hopeful the subbasin can shed its probationary designation and protect its $2 billion agriculture industry.
“It can be done, it just hasn’t been at a scale with so many personalities involved,” he said. “There will always be someone who throws up resistance because they’ve never been told what to do.”
The next meeting is scheduled for 2 p.m. Aug. 20.
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