The Tule Subbasin probationary hearing took place this past Tuesday, September 17 at the State Water Board in Sacramento. An article by SJV Water does a good job of summarizing the hearing (see next article). The bottom line is the State Water Board voted to put the Tule Subbasin in probation – but there is more to this story. As I have mentioned in the past, there are some unique issues in the Tule Subbasin that relate to the impact of groundwater pumping on subsidence (the sinking of ground levels).
The major issue is the impact of groundwater pumping in the Eastern Tule GSA (ETGSA) on the Friant-Kern Canal. The Friant Water Authority that operates the canal encouraged the State to put the Tule Subbasin in probation because they claim that the ETGSA has been too slow in restricting groundwater pumping that continues to impact the canal. The Friant-Kern Canal just opened a new section to replace about 10 miles of canal that had sunk due to subsidence. This $300 million fix has been financed by local, state, and federal dollars. Unfortunately, the subsidence is continuing and this has caused a major dispute between ETGSA and Friant that spilled over into this probation hearing.
But that is not the whole story of this hearing. The State Board staff did make some adjustments and clarifications to the positions that they had taken last April when the Tulare Lake Subbasin was put on probation. A significant change was the openness to granting exclusions to some parts of the Subbasin. Two of the GSAs, Delano Earlimart Irrigation District and Kern Tulare Irrigation District were excluded from the pumping fees requirements of probation, and another two GSAs, the Lower Tule River Irrigation District and the Pixley Irrigation District, also seem poised to possibly be granted an exclusion. In addition, the State Board clarified that GSAs could do the pumping reporting on behalf of their members and clarified that alternative measuring methods like satellite evapotranspiration can be used to report pumping.
There is a lot of dairy farming in the Lower Tule River Irrigation District and the Pixley Irrigation District. Avoiding some of the requirements of probation will not avoid the real pain that the GSAs have imposed on themselves in their updated Groundwater Sustainability Plans submitted in order to satisfy the requirements imposed by the State Board in their interpretation of SGMA.
It is too early to determine how all this will play out over time. But the pain of SGMA is real and starting to be felt big time in the Tule Subbasin.
Geoff Vanden Heuvel
Director of Regulatory and Economic Affairs
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