SJV WATER: High desert groundwater basin in Kern to get $50 million in federal funding; announces settlement with pistachio grower

By Lois Henry, SJV Water

The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority meeting Wednesday kicked off with two major pieces of news: The authority will receive $50 million in federal funding that it will use to help build a pipeline to import water from the California Aqueduct into the high desert basin and it settled a protracted lawsuit with Mojave Pistachios.

“I can’t stress enough how important this development is,” authority chairman and Kern County supervisor Phillip Peters said of the federal funding. “It provides the community assurance that this basin’s overdraft will be addressed in a positive manner. It allows the Navy to continue its mission and expand. And it allowed this board to move forward with the settlement with Mojave Pistachios.”

The money is contained in the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), which was approved by the House of Representatives Tuesday.  It is expected to be approved by the Senate on Dec. 17 and President Biden has indicated he will sign the act in January, Peters said.

The 50-mile pipeline is expected to cost $200 million, so the authority will need that level of funding to come through for several more years, which they are confident will happen as the project will be built by the Army Corps of Engineers.

There is a local match required with the federal funding, but the authority will be applying for other grants and funding that could bring that amount down to just 10% of the cost of the project.

Breathing room

The financial relief provided by the WRDA money allowed the board to work with Mojave Pistachios on a settlement that will also benefit other ag users in the basin through creation of a second so-called “transient pool.”

The Indian Wells Valley sits in the high desert of eastern Kern County.

When the authority created its groundwater sustainability plan, the U.S. Navy claimed basically all of the basin’s “safe yield,” the amount that can be pumped without throwing the aquifer into overdraft. For the Indian Wells Valley, that’s 7,650 acre feet a year, according to the authority’s groundwater model. Demand in the basin is about 28,000 acre feet a year, making it a critically overdrafted region.

The authority assigned a hefty “replenishment fee” of $2,130 per acre foot to pumpers extracting water  above the safe yield. That money is intended to raise $50 million that will be used to buy 5,000 acre feet a year of permanent supply from elsewhere in the state.

It also created a one-time 51,000-acre-foot “transient pool” for eligible agricultural users to pump as needed at essentially no charge. Once that pool was exhausted, however, those users were prohibited from continued pumping – essentially ending agriculture in the Indian Wells Valley.

Mojave Pistachios didn’t sign up for the transient pool and sued over the replenishment fee, which it didn’t pay as it continued pumping. It lost that suit and was ordered to pay the authority $30 million if it continued pumping.

A second pool

With federal funding nearly in hand to build the pipeline, the authority felt it had enough of a safety measure to create a second, one-time transient pool of 20,000 acre feet. Under its settlement with Mojave Pistachios, the grower will get 16,000 acre feet from that pool with the remainder going to other ag interests in the basin.

Fees for that pool of water start at $150 per acre foot and increase as more water is used.

Mojave will also pay the authority a total of $2.7 million, which will bring it current on what’s owed on past pumping, authority attorney Phillip Hall announced at Tuesday’s meeting.

In exchange, Mojave will drop all its pending legal actions and agreed not to argue to increase the safe yield number in another ongoing legal challenge, an adjudication brought by the Indian Wells Valley Water District.

Challenging SGMA

Adjudication proponents were heartened last month when the Fourth District Court of Appeal ordered a trial on the safe yield. The water district has argued that the authority’s safe yield number is too low and safe yield is closer to 14,000 acre feet a year.

But the district has not provided documentation to the authority showing how even that increased safe yield amount would stretch across a demand of 28,000 acre feet.

The authority appealed that ruling to the California Supreme Court.

While it’s a long shot the case will be heard at the high court, an amicus brief filed by the California Attorney General’s office suggests the state may be considering taking action to head off this, and other, legal challenges to SGMA.

The Indian Wells Valley adjudication is one of four similar actions in Cuyama, Oxnard, Pleasant Valley and Ventura River.

Allowing courts to determine a basin’s safe yield, the cornerstone of SGMA, would significantly affect the state’s “…current and future administration and enforcement of SGMA,” the Attorney General writes.

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