By Lisa McEwen, SJV Water
A Tulare County judge agreed that a local groundwater agency was dragging its feet producing documents in a lawsuit filed by Friant Water Authority but also chastised the authority for being “passive” about what it wanted and when.
This is the latest twist in the legal saga between Friant and the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency.
Friant had filed a motion April 14 to get Eastern Tule to ramp up its production of records showing how much groundwater each of its landowners were credited and how they used that groundwater – on their own crops, storage or selling to other landowners.
Eastern Tule’s groundwater crediting system is at the heart of Friant’s lawsuit alleging the agency broke its agreement to help pay for damage done to the Friant-Kern Canal by farmers over pumping in Eastern Tule’s boundaries.
For its part, Eastern Tule said it’s been putting out documents, but it takes time. Especially as Eastern Tule insists on protecting “confidential” landowner information.
Attorneys for both Eastern Tule and Friant appeared at a May 6 hearing that sought to compel the GSA to speed up its review of more than 50,000 documents and hand them over to Friant.
“It has been challenging to project a realistic deadline,” Eastern Tule attorney Gina Nicholls said during the hearing. “We’ve already put in 700 hours, and have at least another 200 to 300 hours for a first pass and review.”
While Judge Bret Hillman granted Friant’s motion, he also denied Friant’s request for $7,200 in sanctions against Eastern Tule and instead encouraged both sides to practice more effective communication, including setting hard deadlines.
“The lack of establishment of a firm deadline for ETGSA to complete production appears, under the facts presented, to result more from passivity in FWA’s communications about its expectations than anything else,” HIllman’s ruling stated. “This is to say that while ETGSA has been less than forthcoming about when it could reasonably be expected to complete production, it has been permitted by FWA, a certain latitude in doing so.”
“By all indications, [Friant] could have simply insisted on that certainty directly in its discussions with ETGSA.”
According to Hillman’s ruling, Friant filed the motion because given Eastern Tule’s current rate of production, approximately 1,000 documents every two weeks, and “an admitted universe of over 50,000 potentially responsive documents — the GSA will not complete production until, at the earliest, April 2026.”
Another hangup is Eastern Tule’s insistence on a protective order to shield private landowner information.
“The main issue is giving notice to landowners to raise any additional issues to protect their confidentiality and private information,” Nicholls told Hillman May 6.
Hillman allowed Eastern Tule to continue its rolling production of documents with weekly updates to Friant, to conclude by June 16.
Both sides are also ordered to jointly establish a protective order.
In setting the June 16 deadline, Friant attorney David Hyndman reminded the court of a pending trial date of Dec. 22.
“Time is ticking,” he said.
