Ruling puts state's groundwater crackdown on hold

A Superior Court judge has temporarily blocked state enforcement actions affecting Kings County growers who faced potential state groundwater extraction fees and an order to install water meters to report annual pumping.

The California State Water Resources Control Board on April 16 placed the Tulare Lake Subbasin, which spans Kings County, on probation for failing to correct deficiencies in a regional plan to protect groundwater supplies.

The Kings County Farm Bureau and two local farmers filed suit May 15 to block the subbasin’s probationary designation—which marked the first such state designation for failing to meet early requirements of California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA.

In a July 11 ruling, Kings County Superior Court Judge Kathy Ciuffini sided with the plaintiffs. She issued a temporary restraining order halting state water board orders that would have imposed new regulatory burdens on farmers operating in the Tulare Lake Subbasin.

Ciuffini scheduled a hearing for Aug. 20 at 1:30 p.m. on whether to grant a preliminary injunction that could block further state actions pending the outcome of legal challenges over the subbasin’s probationary status.

“The judge’s decision to issue the TRO gives us great hope that receiving a temporary injunction in August is a real possibility,” said Dusty Ference, executive director of the Kings County Farm Bureau.

Under the probation declaration, the state ordered growers to install meters on irrigation wells if they had extracted more than 500 acre-feet of water between Oct. 1, 2022, and Sept. 30, 2023, or anticipated exceeding that amount in the same period this year.

Groundwater extractors in the subbasin also faced annual fees of $300 per well and $20 per acre-foot pumped, plus late reporting fees of 25%, under requirements that they file yearly groundwater extraction reports.

The Kings County Farm Bureau said the temporary restraining order means growers in the subbasin are not required to meter or record groundwater pumping information until further notice.

In explaining her ruling, Ciuffini said a July 15 deadline for Kings County landowners to begin complying with the state’s water metering order was untenable.

“The plaintiffs have made a reasonable request to delay the July 15 deadline, and the board either cannot or will not act,” Ciuffini said in court, the SJV Water news site reported. “They have shown that this is a true emergency, and they will suffer irreparable harm if the measuring and reporting requirements start today. There is no doubt in my mind they will suffer financial losses.”

In its lawsuit, the Kings County Farm Bureau said the state water board’s probation decision is “an act of state overreach that exceeds the board’s authority under SGMA.”

The suit said the state actions threaten “to devastate the Tulare Lake Subbasin and the Kings County economy.” It argued that the water board “is proposing to extract tens of millions of dollars directly from landowners in the Tulare Lake Subbasin to carry out this expansion of authority.”

Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit are growers Julie Martella and Helen Sullivan.

Kings County agriculture, valued at $2.6 billion, is the region’s largest economic sector and accounts for $33 million in property taxes, Ference said.

The Tulare Lake Subbasin includes five groundwater sustainability agencies: South Fork Kings, Mid-Kings River, El Rico, Tri-County Water Authority and Southwest Kings. The agencies developed a single groundwater sustainability plan for the subbasin.

The state water board has notified five other subbasins—Tule, Kaweah, Kern County, Delta-Mendota and Chowchilla—that their plans to bring critically overdrafted groundwater aquifers into balance are inadequate. The board is due to decide later this year or early next year on whether to place any of those subbasins under probationary status.