Bear Valley CSD hears from water district manager
Tom Neisler, general manager of Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District, provided information about the local water scene at the April 11 meeting of the Bear Valley Community Services District Board of Directors.
He will make a similar presentation at the CSD’s town hall event planned for 11 a.m. Saturday, May 11.
Neisler noted that TCCWD is a regional purveyor, serving 415 square miles and ensuring a water supply for 40,000 people in the district.
He provided background information on the formation of the water district and court cases that settled water issues in local water basins in the early 1970s — and the updated groundwater management plan for the Cummings Basin approved by Kern County Superior Court in early 2021.
He also explained how the district imports water from the State Water Project to help supplement groundwater in the greater Tehachapi area.
The district is the watermaster for the Tehachapi, Brite and Cummings basins and helps support
Bear Valley’s water supply.
Although there are hard rock wells in Bear Valley, the state does not recognize it as a water basin, Neisler said.
Problems with wells have resulted in the CSD relying on imported water delivered from Cummings Valley for nearly 80% of the district’s water over the past five years.
Going into greater detail, Neisler said that the district imports SWP water and recharges it into Cummings Basin on behalf of the district.
The district then extracts the water in Cummings Valley and pumps it to Bear Valley. The water district is then responsible for replacing that water in the Cummings Basin.
Importing water comes at a cost, Neisler noted. The water district spends about $2 million per year on natural gas to run its importation system — and that expense is expected to increase.
He said the district delivers imported water to agricultural and M&I (municipal and industrial) customers throughout the district, with about two-thirds of the water going to ag and the remainder to M&I users.
M&I users include Bear Valley, Stallion Springs and Golden Hills community services districts and the city of Tehachapi.
THE RUWMP
Neisler also provided information about a regional water plan referred to as the RUWMP (regional urban water management plan).
Bear Valley CSD is among the local entities that participated in the development of the 2015 Greater Tehachapi Area RUWMP that was published in June 2016. And the CSD agreed in 2020 to help fund an engineering services agreement to produce a new plan that was to be complete by July 2021 — and is overdue.
According to the state Department of Water Resources, urban water management plans are prepared by urban water suppliers every five years to support longterm resource planning and ensure that adequate water supplies are available to meet existing and future water needs.
Neisler said he proposed “a planning document with some teeth in it” for the updated plan.
“So the method that I proposed was to allow our public water agency partners to have a fixed growth rate, maximum growth rate, within the document,” he said.
That’s easy for Bear Valley, Golden Hills and Stallion Springs because those are all master-planned communities where build-outs can be calculated, Neisler said. They can determine the maximum amount of water that they will reasonably need over that 20-year planning horizon.
“The city is a different animal, they don’t have any such controls on their growth,” he said. “And they have a desire stated and demonstrated desire to grow at a much more rapid rate. Consequently, the RWUMP has been held up for over two years now, trying to resolve that issue.”
He also referenced a September 2021 lawsuit filed against the city’s approval of the Sage Ranch residential subdivision.
“We’re in litigation with the city over a large-scale development that we feel they have not adequately addressed their water supply assessment, which is required by the California Environmental Quality Act,” Neisler said, adding that a hearing on the lawsuit is set for May 3 in Sacramento.
“This has been a tremendous burden on our staff and has been a tremendous burden on the taxpayers,” he added. “We don’t spend our money — we spend your money. And we’re up close to half a million dollars in legal fees for this lawsuit. And we don’t have we don’t have anything to gain other than protecting the longterm water supply.” (The city of Tehachapi has denied any wrongdoing in its approval of the Sage Ranch project).
“We don’t have a future without water,” Neisler said as he began to wrap up his presentation. “Therefore, we need to zealously guard our water supply. It’s vital to life. Water supplies in California are insufficient, we’re seeing that — it’s in the news all the time. And that’s going to get worse, it’s going to get worse. So we’ve successfully managed water supplies to meet the needs of all of our customers for (over) 50 years — we’ve been doing this for a long time.”