By Lisa McEwen, SJV Water
A new Tulare County water district is on a tight timeline to balance an opportunity to buy water for its farmers with the need to fund its operations long term.
The board of the newly formed Consolidated Water District voted Dec. 3 to buy 2,900 acre-feet of water from three private ditch companies, the Persian, Watson and Matthews ditch companies.
The timing is both good and bad.
Good because the district is preparing for a Proposition 218 election in spring to assess new fees to farmland and this purchase is a clear example of what that money pays for.
The timing is also bad because the district is operating on a $500,000 loan from Consolidated People’s Ditch Company while it gets established. The 2,900 acre feet purchase will eat up $290,000 of that loan.
“We are under the gun to get this money coming in (from land assessments) before we spend too much,” said General Manager James Silva. “When you put your SGMA glasses on, everything looks different.”
He referred to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which mandates overdrafted regions bring aquifers into balance, meaning they don’t pump out more than goes back underground, by 2040.
Of the 84,000 acres covered by the newly formed Consolidated Water District, about 24,000 acres are totally groundwater dependent, meaning they haven’t been part of surface water districts, which use land-based fees to buy water and deliver it to farmers through canals or pipelines.
In order to set assessment levels for land in Consolidated, the district must hold an election under Proposition 218.
Silva said a vast majority of landowners are prepared to pay a land assessment fee in exchange for some hope.
The amount of the proposed fee hasn’t been announced.
Meanwhile, Silva and the Consolidated board jumped at the chance to grab the 2,900 acre feet of surface water for their farmers from the private ditch companies.
The water will be released from Kaweah Lake in eastern Tulare County and will be parked in two recharge basins within the district’s boundaries owned by another ditch company and the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District.
That 2,900 acre feet will then be divvied up among Consolidated’s 84,000 acres, adding about .03 acre feet per acre to each of its farmers’ groundwater accounts.
Silva acknowledged it’s a miniscule amount of water, but it’s water the farmers wouldn’t have had without the district.
“There is no way I can get one acre-foot for everybody. But if I can get one-quarter or a tenth, it’s something that helps everybody and gives them a little more flexibility,” Silva said.
The new district’s goal is to keep finding surface water to reduce the pull on the aquifer and help growers transition to a new way of operating.
“It’s going to be a culmination of a lot of little deals like this,” Silva said. “It’s a little bit of local water, but when we get into flood years and we have some (recharge) basins secured for the district, we’ll see those numbers get larger.”
“It’s a great opening before the (Proposition 218) election to say we already have projects in the works,” said board president Joe Cardoza.
Board member Matt Hutcheson agreed.
“Growers haven’t even opened their wallets yet,” he said.
