Monday June 30, 2025
San Joaquin Valley Water —
The Kaweah subbasin is the second San Joaquin Valley region to successfully escape state intervention, managers learned today.
In a phone call with state Water Resources Control Board staff, managers of Kaweah’s three groundwater sustainability agencies got the news that their efforts to rewrite their groundwater management plans were good enough for staff to recommend that they return to Department of Water Resources oversight.
“I think the proof is in the pudding,” said Aaron Fukuda, speaking on behalf of the East, Mid- and Greater Kaweah groundwater sustainability agencies. “We put everything we had into the development of the GSP, and now we will put all that energy into implementation.”
The Chowchilla subbasin successfully made the u-turn from state enforcement back to oversight in early June. Fukuda said Kaweah will follow much the same path as Chowchilla.
The Water Board will consider the staff recommendation for Kaweah at a meeting in the fall, when it can pass a resolution formally sending Kaweah back to DWR.
Returning to DWR oversight guarantees landowners freedom from additional fees under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which mandates that overdraft stop and aquifers reach balance by 2040. Under probation, landowners would have to register wells at $300 each, install meters and pay $20 per acre foot pumped, on top of fees already paid to their irrigation and groundwater agencies.
That breathing room means a lot to landowners, who just a few years ago were in a subbasin wracked by disagreements over pumping allocations. The three groundwater agencies were at loggerheads and tense meetings pitted farmer against farmer.
Part of the challenge that continues to this day is that the East and Mid-Kaweah groundwater agencies have substantial amounts of imported surface water whereas a large chunk of Greater Kaweah has no surface water. Farmers in those areas are totally dependent on groundwater.
But facing the spectre of probation, water managers, residents and landowners rewrote the region’s plan to include aggressive pumping restrictions basin wide and ramped up the number of water recharge projects.
The efforts earned them first a delay and then a cancellation of their probationary hearing.
The revised plan focuses on four key problems pointed out by Water Board staff: chronic lowering of groundwater levels; land subsidence; degradation of water quality and depletion of interconnected surface water.
Groundwater agencies also opened their pocketbooks to address impacts that lowered groundwater levels have on domestic wells. The crown jewel of the revised plan is a $5.8 million domestic well protection program in cooperation with Visalia-based nonprofit Self-Help Enterprises, hailed by drinking water advocates as a beacon for other subbasins to follow.
Managers have returned to the drawing board on that program, though, as state funding challenges have threatened the GSAs’ ability to assist residents whose wells have gone dry.
Fukuda gave credit to the consultants who have worked alongside basin managers Mark Larsen of Greater Kaweah and Mike Hagman of East Kaweah.
Fukuda said many challenges remain for water managers, including how the state allocates surface water.
“We’re basically managing the extraction of surface water,” he said. “So, if the game changes on the surface water side, it’s going to affect groundwater. But my goal is to give agriculture and communities a fair shot at the same future they had in the past, even though it’s going to be a challenge.”
Kaweah’s revised GSP is posted on the DWR portal at https://sgma.water.ca.gov/portal/state/preview-intervention/4 and is open for a 75-day public comment period until Sept. 1.
According to a June 26 press release from DWR’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Office, posting a GSP on the portal initiates a 75-day public comment period. However, DWR will not evaluate or assess any GSP from the Kaweah subbasin unless requested to do so by the water board or until the board notifies DWR that state intervention is complete and indicates jurisdiction be returned back to DWR. DWR will provide notice if it evaluates the GSP and will open a second public comment period.
Status of other basins
The six other San Joaquin Valley subbasins found to have inadequate plans are in varying stages of the enforcement process.
The Water Board has already placed two valley subbasins on probation, including Tulare Lake, which covers most of Kings County, and the Tule subbasin, which covers the southern half of Tulare County’s flatlands.
The Kings County Farm Bureau sued the state and has so far been able to stave off probationary sanctions in the Tulare Lake subbasin. Probationary sanctions are just getting under way in the Tule subbasin.
The Water Board held Kern’s probationary hearing in February and gave water managers more time to tweak that subbasin’s plan, also noting substantial progress. Its next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 17.The Delta-Mendota subbasin will come before the board sometime this year. The Pleasant Valley subbasin just received an inadequate designation for its plan in February.