How much should Bear Valley CSD charge Grimmway for irrigation water?
Have you ever considered the price, or value, of water?
Directors of the Bear Valley Community Services District will be doing just that as they consider approval sometime soon of a proposal to allow Grimmway Farms to purchase the district’s allocation of Cummings Basin water this year.
Last year, the CSD obtained an irrigation allocation of 335.88 acre-feet of Cummings Basin water from Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District, the watermaster for the basin.
And last year, the district allowed Grimmway Farms to use that irrigation allocation. The company paid the district more than $50,000 to use the allocation — an amount that was calculated at the rate of $150 per acre-foot.
The farming company also bore all of the expense of pumping the water and was only allowed to use it on the property it leases from the district in the Cummings Valley.
All of that information was provided to directors of the CSD at their meeting on Jan. 12 as district administration updated the board on its agreement from Grimmway in 2022 and sought direction for the coming year because the farming company has again asked to use any irrigation water that may be made available.
The presentation prompted Fred Hicks to say that the Bear Valley Springs Association would happily buy all of the irrigation water the district could provide at the rate of $150 per acre-foot.
Hicks said he was at the meeting as a consultant to the BVSA. He said the district charges the association more than $2,000 per acrefoot for water it uses to fill the five lakes in Bear Valley
Springs and irrigate association property there. For BVSA, the $150 per acre-foot rate would be a bargain.
But the district’s attorney, Donald Davis, pointed out that the water in question can’t be brought to Bear Valley Springs. If it could, he said, the district would use it for its own purposes.
Tom Neisler, general manager of the water district, confirmed that any irrigation water allocated to the CSD related to property it owns in the Cummings Basin can only be used there.
“This is native groundwater and must be used on the acreage to be irrigated in (Cummings Basin),” Neisler wrote in an email. “Grimmway leases acreage from BVCSD and irrigates it. The owner can assign
their pumping rights to their tenant and that is what BVCSD was doing. That water cannot be appropriated or taken out of Cummings Basin.”
BACKGROUND
In a staff report, Davis explained that some years ago the district purchased 590 acres of land in nearby Cummings Valley. The property is a few miles outside CSD boundaries. Part of the land is leased to Grimmway and part to Valley Sod.
Prior to 2022, agricultural pumpers were allowed to extract water in the Cummings Basin without specific restrictions from the water district. But a 2021 judgment from Kern County Superior Court changed the situation with what is known as the Amended and Restated Judgment and Physical Solution for the basin, Davis said.
As a result, the water district oversees the groundwater and allocates what is regarded as the natural safe yield of water on an annual basis.
Davis said the district applied for and received an irrigation allocation from the water district last year for 335.88 acre-feet of water.
“This irrigation allocation can only be used on the district-owned property in Cummings Valley,” he wrote in the staff report, referencing the 590 acres leased to Grimmway and Valley Sod and noting that the district amended its leases with the two farming companies to allow for the potential extraction of the groundwater.
Davis noted that staff determined that it was not cost effective to pump the allotment from the well on the Valley Sod leased premises and the district provided the entire allocation to Grimmway. He said that the price of $150 per acrefoot was arrived at based on the cost of purchasing imported water from the water district (if available), less the costs to Grimmway associated with pumping the water (electricity and well maintenance and operations).
Neisler said the deadline for irrigators to apply for an allocation of Cummings Basin water this year was on Jan. 15. The water district will review the requests and inform applicants of their allocations.
Water rights in the Cummings Basin are very different from those in the Tehachapi Basin, Neisler said. In Tehachapi Basin, the rights are prescribed. They are property rights not tied to specific land (except for domestic wells) and can be bought or leased.
But in Cummings Basin, the rights are “overlying and correlative,” he said.
“All pumpers have the right to native water based on their use. The pie is split into pieces of varying sizes and the number and size of slices can change. M&I (municipal and industrial) allocations in Cummings Basin are fixed based on lot sizes. The irrigator (ag) allotments are set annually based on the number of irrigated acres.”
WHAT PRICE?
CSD management will negotiate with Grimmway to come up with a rate for whatever irrigation water it may be allocated this year.
Rick Zanutto, who said he was speaking as a BVS property owner, told the board that he believes the water is worth more than $150 per acre-foot.
Zanutto is a former CSD director and currently represents Division 4 on the water district’s Board of Directors. He’s also a retired farmer. He said he believes the CSD should charge more than $150 per acre-foot, but did not suggest a price.
“We don’t want them to go away,” Zanutto said. “We want them to continue leasing that property. We want them to make a profit. But I
do believe there’s room for negotiation in raising that price.”
Water is commonly measured in acre-feet. An acre-foot of water is approximately 326,000 gallons, which is enough water to cover an acre of land about one-foot deep.
At the rate you might pay at Walmart to buy a gallon of water, the price of an acrefoot of water would be about $378,000. But as a raw commodity bought in bulk, the price is much lower than that.
Last year, the water district set its price for non-potable water at between $363 and $673 per acre-foot, depending upon the pressure zone.
As Davis noted, however, the only potential customer for any pumping allocation the CSD receives for its property in the Cummings Basin is a farmer who will use the water to irrigate that land. So, the limited market can be expected to have an impact on the price.