A drone view of Fresno Irrigation District's Lambrecht Basin in Fresno, California, which provides groundwater recharge and groundwater banking. Photo by Ken James / DWR

SJV WATER: Cataloging San Joaquin Valley water projects is a huge and ever-changing task

by Monserrat Solis, California Local News Fellow, SJV Water

It seems like an impossible task, cataloging all – or at least most – of the various water projects underway and planned in the San Joaquin Valley including new recharge basins, canals, connections and more.

But that’s the near Sisyphean effort two valley water organizations have been working on over the past year under a $1 million Bureau of Reclamation grant.

The goal is to have a central report where water managers, as well as state and federal officials with potential funding, can see what’s ongoing and where infrastructure gaps exist.

“I think it’s a good investment,” said Ashley Boren, executive director of Sustainable Conservation at the time the grant was awarded. “We’ve tried in the past to understand all the infrastructure projects in the valley and it’s really scattered and hard to understand how water is moved.”

The California Water Institute and Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley had hoped to have an initial report ready for review by the Bureau in February 2025.

Recent state actions kiboshing groundwater plans – including planned water projects – in six San Joaquin Valley subbasins, though, have set things back a bit. The Water Institute is hoping for an extension on its report due date, according to interim director Laura Ramos.

“We didn’t know that all the probationary periods were going to slow us down and any revisions of the GSPs, and so we’ve been talking, having conversations with the Bureau,” Ramos said. “If we continue at this pace, the report will be outdated the moment it gets published.”

The Bureau did not respond to calls seeking comment on the extension.

Ramos referred to two subbasins being placed on probation by the state Water Resources Control Board because their groundwater plans were deemed inadequate per the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which requires aquifers be brought into balance by 2040.

The Tulare Lake subbasin, which covers most of Kings County, was put on probation April 16. The Tule subbasin, which covers the southern half of Tulare County’s valley portion, was put on probation Sept. 17.

Two other subbasins, the Kaweah, covering Tulare’s northern half, and Kern have been recommended for probation with hearings coming up early next year.

The Delta-Mendota and Chowchilla subbasins will come before the Water Board sometime later in 2025.

Combined, those subbasins cover a vast swath of the San Joaquin Valley. So having projects across that much territory in regulatory limbo, makes cataloging and evaluating them difficult.

The Water Institute, which operates out of California State University, Fresno, is the actual grant recipient. It contracted with Water Blueprint, a nonprofit advocacy organization,which had already been collecting data on water projects in the valley.

Austin Ewell, Water Blueprint executive director, said the Water Institute funding is covering the cost of engineers and project coordination between the two organizations.

His group created a template for how to analyze groundwater plans from the different subbasins and then met with water managers in those subbasins to make sure they were looking at the information correctly.

The team has so far worked with Kaweah, Kings (which covers most of central Fresno County), Westside (covers western Fresno County), Merced and Delta-Mendota subbasins (covers the western fringes of Madera, Merced and Stanislaus counties), Ramos, said.

The focus is on ensuring that the report is comprehensive and accurate, which requires significant staff involvement, Ramos said.

“When we talk about water, we want to talk with one voice, with one San Joaquin Valley,” she said. “The goal of the report is to see all plans in one easy-to-read report that can identify potential coordinations between subbasins and (infrastructure) gaps.”

Water managers see value in the “one voice” approach.

“That is a good thing, because I think that for the public to truly be able to consume what all of the GSPs are trying to accomplish, there’s not one repository of all of that information that distills it down to an apples to apples comparison,” said Eric R. Quinley, general manager of the Delano-Earlimart Irrigation District and groundwater agency in southern Tulare County.

He’s hopeful the report, when finished, will be helpful for the public and the water community.

Aaron Fukuda, general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, works with the Water Blueprint on a technical scale, providing local solutions. He also works with the Water Institute on regional flood programs.

Fukuda believes it’s time to see one collective voice in the Central Valley.

“It’s not about ag, it’s not about one industry or another industry,” Fukuda said. “The Blueprint is talking about the future of the valley.”

– SJV Water Editor Lois Henry contributed to this article

SJV Water is an independent, nonprofit news site covering water in the San Joaquin Valley, www.sjvwater.org. Email us at sjvwater@sjvwater.org