By Monserrat Solis, SJV Water
Farmers within portions of the Tule and Tulare Lake subbasins will have one month to register their wells or be charged a $150 monthly penalty.
The Tri-County Water Authority Board of Directors unanimously approved imposing a monthly penalty to those with unregistered wells during its Jan. 23 meeting. The fee will affect non-domestic well owners beginning March 1. It will be assigned per landowner, not per well.
“We were originally going to do $100 per well, but technically, I don’t know how many wells each landowner has,” Tri-County Executive Director Deanna Jackson said.
Tri-County has lands in both the Tule and Tulare Lake subbasins, covering the southern portions of Kings and Tulare counties. Both subbasins were placed on probation by the state Water Resources Control Board under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, SGMA, which aims to have local entities bring overpumped aquifers into balance by 2040.
Though probationary sanctions in the Tulare Lake subbasin have been paused due to an ongoing lawsuit.
Last September, the Tri-County board approved a well registration program, requiring wells pumping two or more acre feet a year be registered by Dec. 15, 2024.
“We are having a fairly good well registry now, but we still have quite a few landowners that have not registered,” Jackson said. “The well registry is an important one for accurate data.”
Tri-County is moving from using satellite groundwater use data to metered well data as its primary source of information for how much area farmers are pumping, Jackson said. So, the locations and depths of wells in the area will be crucial information to obtain in working on a proposed subsidence study, which is coming back to the board soon.
The subsidence study will focus on the root of subsidence, or land sinking, in Tri-County’s boundary area.