By Lisa McEwen, SJV Water
Less than two months after agreeing to join forces with the City of Porterville to manage area groundwater, the Porterville Irrigation District board voted Tuesday to abandon the partnership and hold a public hearing on whether to form its own groundwater agency.
That hearing will be held May 13.
The move provoked anger among growers who crammed into the irrigation district’s tiny board room to ask pointed questions and have their say.
“Everything seemed fine, and now things have changed,” said dairyman Matt Kidder. “You even voted to move ahead with the city. You want the power. That’s the problem.”
“Well, yeah!” responded Sean Geivet, general manager for the irrigation district. “I am comfortable with this board. They are elected by all of you guys. So that’s who I represent.”
Porterville Vice Mayor Ed McKervey said the only power struggle he saw was between the irrigation district and its own growers. He accused the board of deciding to kill the city partnership before Tuesday’s meeting even got underway.
“I’m looking at you guys thinking I don’t want to be involved with you,” McKervey said.
The breakup is a continuation of the strife that has dogged the Tule subbasin as it struggles to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which mandates aquifers be brought into balance by 2040.
Squabbles and lawsuits have centered on the southeastern portion of the subbasin where some growers are blamed for overpumping so much that the ground has collapsed, sinking a 33-mile section of the Friant-Kern Canal.
“I like control.”
Sean Geivet, General Manager of Porterville Irrigation District, on the benefit of the district forming its own groundwater agency without the City of Porterville.
All of this is playing out as most of the subbasin was scheduled to begin adhering to sanctions issued by the state Water Resources Control Board after it placed the region on probation last September. Those include that growers meter their wells, report extractions and pay an annual $300-per-well registration fee plus $20 per acre foot pumped. Farmers in two Tule GSAs were excluded from those reporting and fee sanctions.
Those exemptions didn’t include Porterville Irrigation District farmers.
In an attempt to get out from under state sanctions, water districts and GSAs have been frantically revamping plans and management structures.
But the partnership with the City of Porterville, seen as advantageous to both entities when it was approved in February, suddenly soured for board members of the Porterville Irrigation District.
The point of contention, apparently, was the make-up of the board for the nascent Porterville Groundwater Sustainability Agency. The city and irrigation district would each fill two director seats, while a fifth seat had yet to be determined.
Irrigation district legal counsel Aubrey Mauritson had said the fifth board member couldn’t be an irrigation district board member as that would violate the Brown Act, which prohibits a majority of board members from discussing district business outside of noticed public meetings.
Growers wanted someone from their ranks to fill that seat but that idea apparently didn’t fly and the irrigation district wanted out.
Geivet said separating from the city would allow the irrigation district to tailor its own groundwater agency.
“I don’t see any downside to it,” he said of dumping the city. “I like control.”
McKervey said the irrigation district’s fear of losing control was “more perception than reality.”
“I think it’s wrong what you’re doing,” he told board members at Tuesday’s meeting. “We thought we had synergy and optimism. But this power struggle thing I don’t understand.”
Regardless of whether the city and district form a joint GSA, the two entities still need to work together as parts of the city are in the irrigation district’s boundaries and the city buys surface water from the irrigation district.
Grower Armando Leal said after the meeting that he is in favor of the irrigation district forming its own GSA, but feels the GSA board should not be a carbon copy of the irrigation district’s.
“We need more outside representation. Who’s going to do that? If it is only the district board, I have issues with that,” Leal said.
But irrigation district board member Brett McCowan pointed out it’s common practice for water district boards to also run GSAs. That’s how the Lower Tule River, Tea Pot Dome, Vandalia and Delano-Earlimart irrigation districts all operate.
“For speed, efficiency and agility, it’s a lot simpler if, as a continuation of this board meeting, we hold our GSA meeting,” McCowan said. “You guys are making this seem like we’re doing this differently than anyone else.”
Growers at Tuesday’s meeting don’t feel the irrigation district board is transparent enough nor representative of their needs.
“We came up with the rules that most people liked. What did you want us to do, stop everybody that was pumping and let them go broke to satisfy Friant? We compromised and Friant still sued.”
Porterville Irrigation District Board President Eric Borba on the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency’s groundwater crediting system, which he helped create and which Friant Water Authority alleged caused overpumping that damaged the Friant-Kern Canal.
They also pointed to both Geivet’s and irrigation district board president Eric Borba’s involvement in the embattled Eastern Tule GSA as reasons they didn’t want them running the new GSA.
The irrigation district had been a member of the Eastern Tule GSA.
Borba had been that board’s president when Eastern Tule created a groundwater crediting system that allegedly allowed farmers to continue overpumping, exacerbating subsidence on the Friant-Kern Canal. The Friant Water Authority sued Eastern Tule.
“We came up with the rules that most people liked,” a clearly irritated Borba snapped. “What did you want us to do, stop everybody that was pumping and let them go broke to satisfy Friant? We compromised and Friant still sued.”
That didn’t strike growers as a successful groundwater management strategy.
“That’s the confidence factor you can give us?” dairyman Kidder asked. “That makes no sense.”
With Porterville Irrigation District and the City of Porterville likely to form their own GSAs, that will bring the Tule subbasin GSA count to 13. It started the SGMA process back in 2020 with six GSAs.
