By Lisa McEwen, SJV Water
Growers and water managers in the Kaweah groundwater subbasin were gratified to see a formal recommendation this week for the state Water Resources Control Board to move the region from enforcement back to state oversight.
The Water Board will vote on the recommendation to kick the subbasin back into the arms of the Department of Water Resources at its Dec. 2 meeting. Managers had learned in June the recommendation would likely come out this fall.
“It’s great news,” Mid-Kaweah Groundwater Sustainability Agency general manager Aaron Fukuda said during Tuesday’s board meeting.
But, he recognized, “there’s a lot of hard actions” coming as the three groundwater agencies that make up the subbasin begin implementing pumping restrictions for area farmers.
An issue that remains difficult is that farmers in a large chunk of the Greater Kaweah Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) don’t have surface water and rely heavily on pumping. Meanwhile, surface water imported and recharged by farmers in the East and Mid-Kaweah GSAs, tends to drain toward Greater Kaweah.
The situation has created hard feelings as all sides grapple with how to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which requires overpumped areas to be in balance by 2040.
Managers in the region worked hard to get past those hard feelings to write, re-write and revise again a groundwater plan that will slow or even halt chronic lowering of water levels, land subsidence and water quality degradation.
One of the main pillars of their most recently revised plan is a $5.8 million domestic well protection program in cooperation with Visalia-based nonprofit Self-Help Enterprises, hailed by drinking water advocates as a beacon for other subbasins to follow.
Managers have returned to the drawing board on that program, though, as state funding challenges have threatened the GSAs’ ability to assist residents whose wells have gone dry.
The Kaweah subbasin joins the Chowchilla and Kern subbasins, which have also been moved from enforcement back to state oversight.
A return to DWR gives growers, many of whom are adjusting to aggressive basin-wide pumping restrictions, some breathing room from additional fees and reporting requirements that would have been mandated had they gone into probationary status.
The Water Board staff’s recommendation to return Kaweah to DWR will have a 30-day public comment set to end on Nov. 12.
Fukuda encouraged “anyone with positive comments” to please submit them.
Comments may be sent to:
SGMA-Kaweah@waterboards.ca.gov with the subject line: “Comments – Kaweah Subbasin”.
The deadline for written comments on the Staff Assessment for the Kaweah Groundwater Subbasin is 12:00 noon on Wednesday, November 12, 2025.
Fukuda also invited Kaweah landowners to attend the annual “State of the Subbasin” set for 9 a.m.
Tuesday, Oct. 21 at the International Agri-Center, 4500 S. Laspina St. in Tulare. Fukuda said the event will feature a “high-level overview of the landscape,” including SGMA implementation and progress.
