Water managers in two Tulare County groundwater agencies are scrambling to keep their farmers out of state clutches as much as possible, even knowing the solution will be painful.
“As long as we don’t saddle our landowners with another fee and a report to fill out, that’s our goal,” said attorney Alex Peltzer, who represents Lower Tule River Irrigation District and Pixley groundwater sustainability agencies. “That is our attitude and it is doable. It’s going to be unpopular and tough to do, but it’s possible. We think we can help manage landowners into a soft landing.”
The only way to get there, though, is to significantly reduce pumping – and fast.
The state Water Resources Control Board gave the two GSAs 60 days starting Sept. 17 to come up with a plan that proves to them farmers are making strides to stop subsidence, land sinking, and causing damage to drinking water wells from lowering the water table and worsening water quality.
Probation exclusions
The goal is to have farmers in those GSAs excluded from onerous well registration, metering and reporting requirements as well as pumping fees.
Farmers in most of the rest of the region, known as the Tule subbasin, will have to face those state measures after the Water Board placed the subbasin on probation Sept. 17.
Under probation, water managers will work with Water Board staff for the next year to develop a cohesive plan to bring the region into sustainability by 2040. If they can’t come up with a plan, the Water Board will step in and dictate pumping allotments under an “interim plan.”
The board had already excluded the Delano-Earlimart Irrigation District and Kern-Tulare Water District GSAs from the reporting and fees measures as staff had determined those agencies were well on the path to sustainability. Board members weren’t totally convinced Lower Tule/Pixley’s groundwater plan would address problems in the subbasin but gave them time to make their case.
“We believe we have addressed the deficiencies and have a plan that gets us to sustainability,” said Eric Limas, general manager of both Lower Tule and Pixley GSAs, located in the southern portion of Tulare County’s flatlands. “It minimizes and mitigates impacts until then.”
The process is being closely watched by landowners, managers and drinking water advocates.
One knob to turn
If Lower Tule/Pixley’s bids are successful, management will stay at a local level, which leaders say is imperative to maintaining trust built with farmers and community members since 2014, when SGMA was made law.
“Working within the district and its resources is the best scenario for landowners,” Limas said. “If the state comes in with an interim plan, we don’t have a surface water supply or the ability to implement a fallowing program.
“In my mind, the state has one knob to turn and that is to reduce pumping and reduce it until it works. That’s the only tool they have.”
That’s also the main tool for the GSAs, but with a strategic focus on deep pumping.
“All the data we got from the experts is that deep pumping has the biggest contribution to subsidence,” Limas said, who added that the GSAs’ subsidence management plan works with landowners to reduce pumping quickly in subsidence “hot spots.”
Those growers face disparate impacts from the GSAs’ policies and managers will offer land repurposing programs and provisions of surface water where possible.
The cumulative effect of multi-year droughts, reduced surface water deliveries and deep aquifer pumping is what managers are dealing with now.
“We went off the rails on subsidence when we were chasing water in 2014 and 2015,” Peltzer said. “Everyone was going deeper with their wells. There’s a consequence to that and it turns out to be subsidence. And you can’t recover from that. Recharge is not going to fix it because it takes too long to get to the lower aquifer.”
Overall, “transitional pumping” allocations (quantities that are more than what’s sustainable) in the GSAs were cut by half, according to letters sent to the Water Board seeking exclusion from reporting and fee requirements.
Farmers are currently allowed 2 acre feet of transitional pumping per acre, per year. That drops to .75 acre feet in 2025; then .5 acre feet in 2030; then .25 acre feet in 2035; and 0 by 2040.
GSA managers have also committed to reconsidering transitional pumping allocations annually, or more frequently, if necessary instead of keeping allocations for five-year blocks.
The cuts have been painful for farmers.
“That’s what I’m hearing about from growers,” Limas said. “Compared to how we were managing pumping, this is drastically different at the landowner level.”
State oversight crucial for residents
But drinking water advocates are leery of GSAs seeking exclusions from state reporting requirements.
“I just don’t agree with Pixley and Lower Tule asking the state board to review their case and speed up the process,” said Tien Tran, senior policy advocate at Community Water Center. “They are contributing to overpumping, susbsidence and domestic well impacts.”
Tran pointed to the numerous residents who testified at the Sept. 17 probationary hearing who battle rising rates from their community’s small water systems. The water coming into their homes is often contaminated with nitrates or other constituents.
“That’s one example of where the GSAs need to evaluate demand management so that these drinking water users are not paying the price,” she said.
She also pointed out that the entire Tule subbasin can do a better job of working with residents.
“Overall the subbasin needs to come up with a targeted plan of how to do outreach to domestic well users and pair it with mitigation resources,” she said. “The events that do happen are one-offs, and are not consistent. One community fair a year is not enough. There has to be real effort.”
Probation forcing collaboration
Even as some GSAs earn exclusions, coordination must still happen, according to a statement from the state water board.
“While the statute includes potential exclusions from reporting and fees or probationary status, GSAs should continue working in a coordinated manner as uncoordinated efforts to pursue exclusions may slow down efforts to reach basin-scale sustainability.”
As the Tule subbasin GSAs navigate the probationary period, Limas said it will be interesting to see how coordination efforts among them play out.
“But I will say it’s better the way the state board did it, to put everyone in probation,” he said. “It gives everybody the motivation to work together to get out.”
The Tule Subbasin is one of six in the San Joaquin Valley identified by the state as critically overdrafted and the second to appear before the state water board in a probationary hearing. The Tulare Lake Subbasin, which covers most of Kings County, was placed on probation April 16. But fees and reporting requirements are on hold while a lawsuit by the Kings County Farm Bureau plays out.
Future probationary hearings include the Kaweah subbasin on Jan. 7, 2025, followed by the Kern subbasin on Feb. 20, then the Delta-Mendota and Chowchilla subbasins later in 2025.