A California farming region is placed on water probation

SACRAMENTO —

California water regulators have taken an unprecedented step in cracking down on one of the state’s major agricultural regions, which has failed to take steps to curb excessive groundwater pumping by producers, resulting in led to a rapid decline in water levels and land subsidence.

The State Water Resources Control Board voted unanimously Tuesday to place the Tulare Lake Basin on “probationary” status for failing to adopt sufficient measures to combat chronic overpumping.

Declining groundwater levels have caused land subsidence of up to 6 feet in parts of the region over the past decade, and state officials have determined that a local groundwater management plan would help for the free fall to continue. They say that without stricter measures, hundreds of domestic wells risk drying up.

This is the first time California officials have used their authority to intervene in a community to impose stricter measures to curb groundwater depletion, as required by the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA ) of the State, ten years old.

“The goal here is to prepare people to succeed at the local level. We recognize that this is very difficult work,” board member Laurel Firestone said before the vote. “When these decisions are this important and this difficult, sometimes it falls to the state to act as a safety net, and that’s what I think we need to do.”

Now that the southern San Joaquin Valley area has been placed on probation, large agricultural landowners will be required to begin reporting to the state how much water they pump from wells and pay fees based on of the quantity they use.

The vote came at the end of a daylong meeting in Sacramento in which farmers and representatives of local groundwater agencies urged the State Water Board to postpone intervention and give them more time to improve their local plan to move towards sustainable groundwater management.

Farmer Doug Freitas told the board the “excessive costs” would seriously harm the farming community.

“Don’t allow SGMA to kill, steal and destroy our lives,” Freitas said. “We, the people of this great state of California, would like to request additional time to address these issues that need to be corrected.”

But board members said the state needs to step in.

“The goal here is not to be the least bit punitive,” said board president Joaquín Esquivel.

“The reality is that probation is a step,” Esquivel said. “It’s a process that ultimately is within local control.”

The Tulare Lake Basin is one of the six areas of the San Joaquin Valley where local groundwater plans have been deemed inadequate by the state.

Under the state’s 2014 groundwater law, the basin’s five local groundwater agencies are required to develop a plan to reduce pumping and curb chronic declines in groundwater levels. here 2040.

But last year, staff at the National Water Office recommended probationary status after finding that the local plan did not include adequate measures to stop falling water levels and the related problem of land subsidence, among other issues.

The land is sinking rapidly in the areas around the town of Corcoran. The levees that protect Corcoran from flooding have had to be raised twice in the past decade, including last year when long-dry Tulare Lake resurfaced on thousands of acres of farmland.

“There have been and continue to be very serious impacts on people,” Firestone said. “While modifying and reducing pumping will have very serious impacts, doing nothing and maintaining the status quo already has – and will continue to have – real impacts on communities, their infrastructure and their livelihoods. And so we do this, I think, because we all recognize that we have no choice.

The move represents the first phase of what could be a two-step state intervention process. State officials say they will work with the five local groundwater sustainability agencies to collect data and develop a workable plan.

The area will be in probationary status for one year. Most well owners will have to start reporting how much they use, while those who pump more than 500 acre-feet per year will have to install meters on their wells. Well owners will also have to pay the state $300 per well, plus a pumping fee of $20 per acre-foot, a measure intended to cover costs associated with state intervention.

“The first step we take is to get information, to understand what’s going on. That’s what probation means,” Firestone said. “We need to figure out where the wells are and how much is being pumped. »

The goal, state officials say, is to work with local agencies to improve their plan so that state intervention is no longer necessary.

But if local agencies fail to address deficiencies in their groundwater plan, the State Water Board would move to a second phase involving stronger intervention. State officials could then consider imposing pumping restrictions or imposing fines when pumping exceeds limits.

State officials believed the local agencies’ plan allow a continued decline in groundwater levels this would put around 700 domestic wells at risk of drying up.

“The Tulare Lake Basin’s groundwater supplies are clearly under threat, and we are acting today to protect this resource because communities depend on it for their basic needs, especially drinking water,” Esquivel said. “Our goal remains for these catchments to be managed sustainably at a local level, and we are committed to helping groundwater agencies achieve this by providing them with data, guidance and support as they improve their plans.”