By Monserrat Solis, SJV Water
Landowners who rely on domestic wells for drinking water may be able to seek help from the Mid-Kings River Groundwater Sustainability Agency if the tap runs dry.
In an Aug. 12 board meeting, the GSA unanimously approved a $2 million program to help owners repair wells damaged by excessive groundwater pumping and keep water flowing to residents.
The program will have two tracks: One is for domestic well owners; The other is for municipal, industrial and community wells.
The first track, serving domestic and mutli-domestic well owners, will offer emergency drinking water within 24 hours and interim drinking water, such as a water tank, within 72 hours of notifying the GSA. A well owner with fewer than four service connections qualifies under multi-domestic.
“The idea is if our rural domestic well owners are experiencing impacts due to water quality, due to water levels, due to subsidence on their wells, then this program is going to cover that,” GSA engineering consultant Amer Hussain told the Mid-Kings board.
Hussain estimated that repairing or redrilling a well could cost $65,000.
The well owner must provide proof that negative impacts to their well occurred after Jan. 1, 2015, the start of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which aims to have local entities bring aquifers into balance by 2040.
The program isn’t retroactive and won’t repay landowners who have already fixed their wells, Hussain said.
The second track will serve municipal, industrial and community well owners. The GSA will pay up to $30,000 for technical assistance.
“It doesn’t mean we’re giving them cash,” Hussain said. “It just means that we’re giving them that amount of money in support.”
That support may be helping with grant applications, designing a well or conducting feasibility studies.
“We’ll do what is necessary to help them get that well back, short of actually having to go out there and actually drill a brand new well,” he said.
Based on the estimation that 30 wells within a two year period will go dry within Mid-Kings, the GSA is budgeting the program at $2 million. The GSA estimates there are 1,170 domestic wells in the GSA’s boundaries, Secretary Chuck Kinney wrote in an email.
In order to raise that money, the GSA will likely have to hold a Proposition 218 election to increase land assessment fees. Prop. 218 elections are required when new or increased assessment fees are proposed.
The proposed groundwater fee may also require a Proposition 26 election, according to Hussain. That proposition broadened the definition of taxes to include fees and other charges for programs that benefit individuals or businesses.
The proposed land assessment will pay to “keep the lights on” while the pumping fees will cover the cost of carrying out the program’s objectives, Hussain said.
He suggested the land assessment fee would need to be about $19 per acre and the groundwater pumping fee would be $15 per acre foot pumped. There are currently no land assessment or pumping fees for farmers in Mid-Kings.
The board will hold a second study session to include public opinion on the proposed fees in September.
Board member and County Supervisor Doug Verboon said the public needs to have some say over the proposed fees.
“I don’t want controversy in my community. I want people to understand what they’re voting for and we want to be available to show them what will happen if we don’t get it right,” Verboon said.
The previous Mid-Kings GSA board, which was managed by Kings County Water District, was unsuccessful at a Prop. 218 election held in 2024. That election proposed a $95-per-acre-foot pumping fee and a land assessment fee of $25 per acre.
At the time, farmers were up in arms about the fees, which would have raised $11 million for Mid-Kings. In a letter to the board, Farm Bureau Executive Director Dusty Ference called the fees “unfathomable.”
In April 2024 the state Water Resources Control Board put the region on probation for lacking an adequate groundwater plan. A month later, Mid-Kings imploded after the Kings County Water District bailed and the county was left to pick up the pieces.
The Kings County Farm Bureau sued the Water Board over the probationary designation, which is still working through the court system.
