On the Colorado River, the Imperial Irrigation District conducted a large temporary land fallowing program this past fall. To qualify for a payment, a farmer had to not irrigate their fields for 49 days from August 11 until September 30. In total, 154,140 acres of alfalfa, Bermuda grass and Klien grass participated in the program and received $49,600,000 for the resulting water savings of 172,277 acre-feet calculated at the Colorado River intake to the All-American canal, which serves the Imperial Valley (farmer payment = $322 per acre for a reduction of 1.12 acre feet per acre). This program was funded by the federal government as part of a plan to enhance the water levels in Lake Mead. Farmers were willing to participate because of the low market prices for hay right now, particularly for low quality late summer cuttings. Time will tell whether the plants can survive this approach and comeback to productivity when irrigation returns over the winter.
In the Kaweah Subbasin, a new public water district is being proposed. The Consolidated Water District would comprise some 80,000 acres of currently undistricted land contained within the Greater Kaweah Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA). The formation of the new district is being spearheaded by the private ditch companies in that area that have very significant surface water rights to the Kaweah River and the St. Johns River. These private ditch companies were not able to form a GSA because the SGMA law stipulated that GSAs could only be formed by public agencies. The ditch company representatives have been actively engaged with the Greater Kaweah GSA but decided to form a public agency to facilitate the more efficient development of transmission and recharge infrastructure to utilize the very significant surface water rights they control. The new public water agency will encompass adjacent lands to those that currently hold ditch company “stock,” enabling those lands to have access to surface water. Becoming a public agency also gives the new district access to new financing and funding opportunities as well as enhancing water purchase and sale prospects. The proposal has been approved by the Tulare County Local Agency Formation Commission and the Tulare County Board of Supervisors has approved submitting the proposal to a vote of the landowners. That mail-in ballot will be held in May. See a map of the proposed Consolidated Water District here.
Geoff Vanden Heuvel
Director of Regulatory and Economic Affairs
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