By Phillip Peters, First District Supervisor on the Kern County Board of Supervisors and board member of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority
For the past decade, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority (IWVGA) has worked to secure the future of our water supply across nearly 600 square miles in Kern, Inyo, and San Bernardino counties. Like many others across California, this agency was born of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
In 2014, the Legislature passed SGMA which mandated local agencies in critically overdrafted basins to develop groundwater sustainability plans. These plans had to be backed by science, vetted by the public, and approved by the state. The state made the rules — and we followed them.
That work wasn’t easy or cheap. In Indian Wells Valley, it took years of data collection, stakeholder engagement, over $13 million in local taxpayer investment, and close collaboration with the U.S. Navy to ensure both community survival and national security. In 2022, the state approved our plan.
To be clear, SGMA has its flaws, and we have grappled with the State in our efforts to be in compliance. But in places like Indian Wells Valley, where aquifers were being pushed toward collapse, SGMA forced long-overdue action. It compelled communities to face hard realities and begin working toward sustainable solutions after decades of watching water tables decline.
Now, that progress is in jeopardy — not because the science was flawed, but because the state may refuse to back its own process.
Courts Are Rewriting the Rules
Despite receiving state approval, IWVGA’s plan is now under attack by lawsuits from two of the basin’s largest water users: the Indian Wells Valley Water District and Searles Valley Minerals, owned by India’s Nirma Company. These lawsuits don’t dispute the basin’s decline — they challenge who gets to decide how much water remains and how it should be allocated.
The adjudication process these lawsuits invoke allows for a de novo review — meaning a court can discard years of technical work and start over from scratch. That would force taxpayers to pay for experts, modeling, and legal fees all over again, effectively turning SGMA into an expensive yet ultimately futile exercise.
We’re not opposed to courts resolving water rights. But they should not ignore the time, effort, and public resources communities like ours have invested to comply with state law. If everything local agencies were required to do can be dismissed in a courtroom, it sends a dangerous message: compliance doesn’t matter.
AB 1413: A Reasonable Fix on the Brink
Assembly Bill 1413 offers a simple, common-sense solution. It would require that legal challenges to state-approved groundwater plans be heard in a consistent, centralized judicial process — one that respects the structure the state itself created.
The bill doesn’t decide who gets the water. It simply ensures that the process isn’t chaotic, duplicative, or blind to the planning work already done in good faith.
And yet, AB 1413 may not survive.
On August 25, it will face the Senate Appropriations Committee, where the bill could be shelved by placing it on the Suspense File — a procedural move that can quietly kill legislation, even if it has no fiscal impact. And in this case, state agencies have confirmed that AB 1413 carries none.
Letting the bill die this way would leave local groundwater agencies without clear legal standing and undermine the very system the Legislature created just over a decade ago.
A Costly and Confusing Precedent
The stakes go far beyond Indian Wells Valley. Dozens of basins across California were required to develop sustainability plans under SGMA. If courts can now disregard those plans — and if the state refuses to protect the work it required — why would any local agency waste time or effort complying with future state water mandates?
Even more troubling, a recent court ruling in our region threatens federal reserved water rights at NAWS China Lake. If that precedent spreads, it could weaken legal protections for military bases and tribal lands across California — unraveling the longstanding Winters Doctrine and setting back more than 100 years of water law.
Don’t Waste the Work
Water is too precious to be left to endless litigation.
Taxpayer investments shouldn’t have to fund the same fight twice.
Local communities did what the state required. We followed the law, invested in the process, and produced a plan the state itself approved. If lawmakers now allow that work to be invalidated without due process — or quietly let AB 1413 die in committee — they’ll be telling Californians that legal compliance doesn’t matter.
It’s time for the state to follow through on its own mandate.
Pass AB 1413.
Phillip Peters is the First District Supervisor on the Kern County Board of Supervisors and a resident of Bakersfield. He is also a board member of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority, the groundwater sustainability agency responsible for managing the 597 square miles of the critically overdrafted Indian Wells Valley groundwater basin that includes portions of the counties of Kern, Inyo, and San Bernardino, the City of Ridgecrest and the U.S. Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. Phillip has written multiple published articles on topics ranging from water and energy policy to labor and education.
