By Lois Henry, SJV Water
A group of water users in Kern County’s Indian Wells Valley who disagree with how groundwater has been apportioned, won a legal skirmish last month in a court of appeal but the state Supreme Court may have the final word.
The issue in the high desert basin is whether the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority is using an appropriate “safe yield” figure. Safe yield refers to how much water naturally accumulates in an aquifer each year in order to determine how much can safely be pumped out without putting the basin into overdraft.
The groundwater authority has used a model showing the basin accumulates only about 7,650 acre feet of natural inflow each year but users pump out nearly 28,000 acre feet, creating a severe overdraft.
In order to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) to bring the basin into balance, the authority severely restricted pumping for most users. The U.S. Navy, which operates the China Lake Naval Weapons Base in the basin, got the lion’s share of pumping.
Most other users, including the Indian Wells Valley Water District, which serves the town of Ridgecrest, Searles Minerals and agricultural users, got nearly zero in pumping allocations

In order to pump what they needed, the water district, Searles and agricultural users had to pay a $2,130-per-acre-foot “replenishment fee,” under the authority’s plan. That fee is intended to raise $50 million so the authority can buy and import water from elsewhere in the state through a pipeline it’s planning to build.
The Department of Water Resources approved the groundwater authority’s plan in 2022.
The water district later filed a legal action, known as an adjudication, challenging the authority’s safe yield figure. According to a report from the water district, the safe yield is closer to 14,000 acre feet a year. Mojave Pistachios lost a separate lawsuit over the replenishment fee and was ordered to pay $30 million in back fees to the authority.
In the adjudication, the water district is seeking a trial to determine the safe yield. The groundwater authority moved to block a trial. Last month, the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the water district, meaning a trial over the Indian Wells Valley’s safe yield could proceed.
The water district and Searles, part of a group called “Protect Our Water,” celebrated the ruling, saying the authority’s efforts to “…delay and block the use of critical data have only prolonged the adjudication process,” according to a press release that quoted the water district board’s president Ronald Kicinski.
However, the authority has appealed that ruling to the California Supreme Court, the authority’s attorney Phillip Hall confirmed.
While a hearing by the Supreme Court is often considered a very long shot, this time might be different.
This adjudication is being viewed as a serious threat to the underlying legal tenets of SGMA, according to an amicus brief by the California Attorney General’s office on behalf of DWR and the Water Resources Control board, the agencies tasked with administering and enforcing SGMA.
The amicus brief, filed in October, notes that the Indian Wells Valley adjudication is one of four similar actions filed in basins with adopted and approved Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs) under SGMA. The others include the Cuyama, Oxnard, Pleasant Valley and Ventura River basins.
The Fourth District Court of Appeal’s ruling on the Indian Wells Valley safe yield issue could directly impact those other cases, the amicus brief states.
“If the trial courts in this case and other cases are free to conduct a de novo (new) trial on a basin’s safe yield and potentially adopt (the Indian Wells Valley Water District’s) position that the safe yield is significantly higher than as determined in the GSP, that determination will significantly affect the State Agency’s current and future administration and enforcement of SGMA,” the Attorney General’s brief states.