ETGSA approves amended GSP to submit to state Plan for Tule Subbasin must be submitted by July 26
The Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency board approved an amended groundwater sustainability plan it believes will be approved by the state at its meeting on Monday.
Agencies that govern groundwater pumping are required to submit GSP’S to the state on how they’re going to meet the requirements of the Groundwater Sustainability Management Act.
The amended plan was required after the State Department of Water Resources gave ETGSA’S GSP an incomplete rating in January. DWR gave virtually all of the GSP’S from agencies across the state an incomplete rating.
The ETGSA’S GSP is effectively the plan for several agencies in the San Joaquin Valley’s Tule Subbasin. The ETGSA that covers virtually all of Southeastern Tulare County is part of the Tule Subbasin. Their plan was received an incomplete rating in January.
All of the agencies in the Tule Subbasin must approve the plan for it to be submitted to the state and the deadline for it to be submitted to the state is July 26. All of the agencies in the Tule Subbasin will be meeting this week to consider the plan.
After the plan is submitted there will be a public comment period. The amended plan will also be posted on the ETGSA website, https:// www.easterntulegsa. com
The plan establishes a “mitigation framework” for all of the agencies in the Tule Subbasin to follow. At Monday’s meeting, Tule River Waternaster David De Groot, who has been serving as the point man for the Tule Subbasin when it comes to their GSPS, summarized the amended GSP at Monday’s meeting. He said all of the agencies in the Tule Subbasin will have to implement their own specific plans that follows the mitigation framework by December 31.
What has frustrated agencies is they were required to submit their GSPS in 2020, but the state didn’t evaluate them until January, 2022. Agencies, including the ETGSA, have done a lot to meet the requirements of the SGMA since then, a point made by De Groot at Monday’s meeting. “We haven’t been sitting here idle the last 2 ½ years,” De Groot said.
De Groot noted some of the measures that have been taken in the last two years include looking at water recharge, conveyance — the delivery of water, purchasing of water and water trading.
The biggest action taken when it comes to conveyance is the beginning of repairs to a 10mile stretch of the Friant-kern Canal severely damaged by what’s known as land subsidence, the effective sinking of the canal. Those repairs are the start of the planned repairs of a 33-mile stretch of the canal from between Lindsay and Strathmore to
north Kern County.
As part of the effort to make those repairs possible the ETGSA entered into a settlement with the Friant Water Authority to pay for the damage that overpumping of groundwater has done to the canal. That’s noted in the amended plan, De Groot said.
Growers in the ETGSA overwhelming decided in a recent election to stick with what the ETGSA refers to as “transitional” water fees as opposed to a land fee in which those in the agency would have paid $140 per acre feet which would have been assessed as part of property taxes.
If the land fee would have been approved the ETGSA would have been able to effectively pay the FWA $125 million up front as part of the settlement. Now the ETGSA is looking at paying the FWA $200 million. But it was determined the financing of the transitional fees was actually more cost-effective than the land fee.
De Groot said ETGSA met a couple of times with DWR to cover the technical changes that needed to be made in the plan. He added several meetings were held and more analysis was done to come up with the mitigation framework needed for the plan.
ETGSA’S plan basically calls for a transitional pumping program over the next 15 years that will reduce the pumping of groundwater and reach groundwater sustainability required in the SGMA.
Among the actions taken by ETGSA have been the implementation of land subsidence monitoring with a plan for an expansion to 26 land subsidence monitors along the Friant-kern Canal. De Groot said some of the monitors have been installed and some are in the process of being installed.
“That’s quite a bit of change from before and it’s a good,” said FWA general counsel Donald Davis, commenting on the monitors. “You have not been idle. Ware are appreciative of the efforts. We appreciate the continued coordination.”
In January in a letter to ETGSA when it gave the agency an incomplete rating, DWR stated the agency needed to address three areas: water quality, groundwater levels and land subsidence. De Groot said laid out how the amended plan addresses those areas on Monday.
Agencies can receive three ratings when it comes to their plans: Approved, incomplete or inadequate. An inadequate rating would mean the state would have the authority to intervene when it comes to how an agency would implement its plan.