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ca.gov
In response to the recent detection of golden mussel (Limnoperna fortunei) in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the state of California has developed a comprehensive Golden Mussel Response Framework(opens in new tab) to address this urgent invasive species threat. The discovery in October 2024 marked the first known occurrence of golden mussel in North America. To combat this threat, the framework provides coordinated strategies by multiple California departments to prevent further introduction and spread of golden mussels, as well as to contain and suppress infestations to minimize their impact on the environment, water conveyance, recreation and agriculture.
In addition, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is offering $1 million in grant funding to boating facility operators to enhance efforts against invasive mussels, particularly the threat of golden mussels. This funding supports projects that help prevent the introduction and spread of invasive mussels in lakes, reservoirs and waterways, ensuring the long-term health of state waters. The grant solicitation and application link can be found on CDFW’s website.
Native to East and Southeast Asia, golden mussels pose a significant threat to California’s natural ecosystems, water infrastructure, agriculture, and economy. The invasive species has already caused major disruptions in other parts of the world, including heavy biofouling of water intake systems, and negative impacts to habitat and wildlife.
“The discovery of golden mussels in California is a serious challenge that requires coordinated action and a long-term commitment,” said CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham. “This response framework recommends critical steps that must be taken across state, regional and local levels to limit the spread and mitigate the impacts of this invasive species.”
“Taking coordinated action to address this invasive species will help safeguard critical water infrastructure like the State Water Project from the negative impacts golden mussels can pose to water delivery systems,” said John Yarbrough, DWR Deputy Director for the State Water Project. “Using this new framework and close collaboration with partner agencies, DWR will implement strategies to address this invasive species and minimize impacts by monitoring for the mussels in SWP waters and developing a mitigation plan.”
Reservoir managers across the state are adjusting their recreational plans for the upcoming boating season to address concerns for the golden mussel.
DBW maintains a list of contacts at: https://dbw.parks.ca.gov/inspections(opens in new tab).
The response framework developed by the Golden Mussel Task Force is composed of key state and federal agencies, including CDFW, DWR, California State Parks, California Department of Food and Agriculture, and several other federal and local partners. It outlines a comprehensive strategy to respond to the invasive species, focusing on preventing further introduction, containing mussels within currently infested waters and reducing population within the invaded range where feasible.
Key recommendations in the response framework include:
Containment and Prevention Measures
Development of a map of Delta launch sites to prioritize management at high-use sites.
Investigation of pathways of spread, such as watercraft and overland movement, aquaculture trade, etc.
Increased inspection and decontamination capacity for watercraft, with expanded training for inspectors.
Education and Outreach
Launch of education campaigns to inform the public about the golden mussel threat and how they can help prevent its spread.
Posting of signage at waterbodies where golden mussels are present promoting the “Clean, Drain, Dry” practice following and ending every outing.
Collaboration with businesses that provide watercraft cleaning services to promote industry standards.
Incentives and Partnerships
Promotion of watercraft cleaning services within and around the Delta to assist in controlling the spread of the mussels.
The Golden Mussel Task Force will continue to collaborate to mitigate the impacts of this invasive species and protect the state’s water resources. The Golden Mussel Framework is a dynamic document, evolving with new information and adaptive management strategies.
For more information or to learn how you can help prevent the spread of golden mussel and report sightings visit: https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Invasives/Species/Golden-Mussel.
Media Contacts:
Krysten Kellum, CDFW Communications, (916) 825-7120
Maggie Macias, DWR Public Affairs Office, (916) 902-7405 …
Read the full article at ca.gov
Washington Post
“We’re going to solve your water problem — you have a water problem that is so insane, it is so ridiculous, where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea. And I just met with a lot of the farmers who are great people, and they’re saying, we don’t even understand it. … They have farms up here, and they don’t get water. I said, ‘Oh, that’s too bad. Is it a drought?’ ‘No, we have plenty of water. … We shove it out to sea.’ … The environmentalists don’t know why. They’re trying to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish.”
— Donald Trump, then a candidate for president, at a campaign rally in Fresno, California, on May 27, 2016
“As you probably heard, I released billions of gallons of water going in from upstate California from the most northern parts of California, probably comes in from Canada to a certain extent. Thank you very much, Canada, we appreciate it. … They had all that water pouring out right into the Pacific. They had a big valve, like a giant valve as big as this room and they turned the valve, takes one day to turn it, and they face it toward the Pacific Ocean and the water, all that was coming down, all millions and millions of gallons coming down. They put it into the Pacific Ocean, which for the Pacific Ocean is like a drop of water. But for California, it would have been unbelievable. So, we did it. I’m very proud of the fact that we did it. We did that against a lot of heat and a lot of environmental nonsense.”
— President Trump, remarks while signing executive orders, April 8, 2025
Follow Fact-checking politicians
This is the story of how, under Trump, a falsehood with a kernel of truth becomes ever grander — and eventually becomes ineffective policy.
California water policy is notoriously complicated. At its core, it involves a constant battle between cities and farms, each side wanting more. A politically connected group of Central Valley farmers gave Trump their version of the truth during a meeting in 2016, and he has hung on to that tale ever since.
There is a three-inch silvery fish — called a delta smelt — that needs fresh water to thrive. (It is considered functionally extinct, because no fish have been counted in seven years of surveys since 2018.) But the water flows ordered by California officials also benefited much bigger fish, such as salmon and other commercial fisheries. The smelt is considered a bioindicator, reflecting the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which is on the edge of California’s agriculturally rich Central Valley and which empties into the Pacific Ocean.
But water from Canada doesn’t make it to Southern California — and there is no “giant valve” that can direct it. Instead, the Army Corps of Engineers released 2 billion gallons of water from two reservoirs it controlled — where it largely went to waste so Trump could claim success.
The 2016 campaignIt all may have started in 2007 with a failed golf course deal.
That year, Trump toured a failing golf course called Running Horse in Fresno. “What Trump saw was more than 400 acres of mostly weeds, several huge trenches for sunken fairways and only two holes with grass,” the Fresno Bee reported. “Course construction stopped last year and Running Horse filed for bankruptcy protection in April.”
Trump made an offer, then pulled out — and by 2014, an almond orchard had taken over the site.
Then, in early 2016, Johnny Amaral, a politically connected water authority executive, organized a roundtable for Trump with 50 farmers to discuss water issues and a tour of the Central Valley. Amaral did not return calls from The Fact Checker, but he has described the session in interviews over the years.
Amaral told the Los Angeles Times that the message to Trump was that “the Central Valley is not out of water because of the drought, but because the water is mismanaged.”
“When you see it with your own eyes, it’s hard to unsee this — it’s maddening,” Amaral told Bloomberg News. “I think he saw this problem with his own two eyes and decided that’s a problem that needs to be fixed.”
Trump may have been primed to think this because, in his mind, the Fresno golf course deal fell apart because of a lack of water. “I was going to take it over and do a beautiful job,” he told a campaign rally in 2016. “Fortunately, I didn’t do it because there is no water anymore because they send all the water out to the ocean, right? I got lucky that I didn’t do it, but I would have changed the water. I would have worked it out, no worry.”
According to the Congressional Research Service, farmers already get most of the water that is delivered via the federally run Central Valley Project — about 5 million acre-feet (1.629 trillion gallons). An additional 600,000 acre-feet goes to municipalities and industry, 410,000 acre-feet to wildlife refuges and 800,000 acre-feet to fish and wildlife needs. That means farmers get more than 70 percent of the water in the Central Valley. Another network, the California-run State Water Project, delivers about 70 percent of its water to urban users, including 25 million people in San Francisco Bay, Central Valley and Southern California.
“Many farmers get their water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and they get it with huge pumps that pull it into canals. These pumps are so strong they suck fish into them, and drain so much fresh water that more salt water comes in and harms all of the fish,” said Thomas Holyoke, a political science professor at California State University at Fresno. “Farmers talk more about the smelt, I think, because it has less of an obvious commercial value.”
It has always been a delicate balance in California, where battles over water allocation are legion. More water to farmers means more crops — and higher profits. The flip side is that more water to farmers could mean fewer fish and dirtier water in a fragile ecosystem. But that nuance was lost on Trump, who channeled the farmers’ frustrations to describe the existing policies as “so insane … so ridiculous.”
“It warms our heart a little bit that he still talks about a 30-minute or hour drive around the east side,” Amaral recently told Politico, referring to Trump’s 2016 visit.
Trump’s first term“We’re spending a fortune in California because of poor maintenance and because, frankly, they’re sending a lot of water out to the Pacific to protect the smelt. And, by the way, it’s not working. The smelt is not doing well. But we’re sending millions and millions of gallons, right out into the Pacific Ocean, of beautiful, clean water coming up from the north — or coming down from the north.”
— Trump, during a Cabinet meeting, Aug. 16, 2018
The saga of the delta smelt became a regular feature of Trump’s talking points during his first term. But the first time he mentioned a “valve” was in 2018. The word slipped into his usual spiel about his visit to the Central Valley.
“I look at these incredible, beautiful fields, and they’re dry. It’s like dry as a bone. And I see hundreds and hundreds of acres as far as the eye could see, and then you’d have a little, tiny, little green patch in the corner. Just beautiful — green. It’s so beautiful. So rich … I said, ‘You must have a tremendous drought going on.’ This is like, three and a half, four years ago. … They said, “No, we have so much water, we don’t know what to do with it. But they don’t let the water come down to us.’ … I believe he said they’re trying to protect a smelt. … Nobody knows what a smelt is. I still don’t know what a smelt is. … And they have a — like a valve, but massive. Like from a faucet, but massive. And they turn it and the water goes pouring … out into the Pacific Ocean, where it means nothing.”
Trump mentioned the valve again in 2020, when he signed an executive order on California water accessibility that would have pumped more water into the Central Valley. (A federal judge blocked the order after critics argued it would harm endangered species and salmon runs.)
“Just have the valve go in a little different direction. Okay? This one is easy. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t do it. Someday you’ll explain to me politically why that’s good that you’re rationing water when you have so much water.”
On the campaign trail in 2020, the valve became a regular feature of Trump’s pitter-patter when discussing California water issues and the “tiny, little fish” responsible for the problem.
“In California they have tremendous amounts of water pouring down from the north. You look at it — and yet they have no water. And they’re going to ration everybody. And all they have to do is let the water come down. You heard what they do with the water? They send it out into the Pacific Ocean, they have this massive valve up north, and as the water comes pouring down from the snow and all beautiful nice, clean water, they send it out. Because there’s a tiny, little fish that they are trying to save.”
— Trump, interview with Mark Levin on Fox News, on Sept. 20, 2020
In that interview, a fresh idea occurred to Trump: “Los Angeles, you can’t even water your grass. You’re not allowed to water your grass. You have a home for $25 million, you can’t water the grass.”
The third election campaignTrump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. He immediately started running again — and his stories about California water got even more unmoored from the truth.
First, the delta smelt became even more of a bad guy.
In Los Angeles, “I stayed at one of those houses … $35 million house, and you can’t take a shower. Honestly, it’s a bad way of life. … This is all because Gov. Gavin Newsom and the radical left Democrats, extremists, and the people that run this state, in order to save an extremely unimportant, very little and nonproductive fish, the delta smelt. Did you ever hear of it? … That little sucker is causing you to not be able to clean yourself, the delta smelt. Because of that delta smelt, you don’t have any water. You don’t have farms. You don’t have anything.”
Then, the valve became a giant faucet — in Canada — that would direct water all the way to Los Angeles.
“In order to protect a certain little, tiny fish called a smelt, they send millions and millions of gallons of water out to the Pacific Ocean, way up north, never even gets close to here. … You have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north with the snow caps in Canada all pouring down. And they have a, essentially, a very large faucet. And you turn the faucet, and it takes one day to turn it. It’s massive. It’s as big as the wall of that building right there behind you. And you turn that, and all of that water goes aimlessly into the Pacific. And if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here and right into Los Angeles.”
Trump’s remarks confused experts in Canada. The Columbia River runs through British Columbia into the states of Washington and Oregon, but there is no infrastructure to bring that water to California, let alone to Los Angeles.
A month later, Trump even told an L.A. radio station that he had seen the faucet: “Millions of gallons of water, millions and millions — I’ve seen it. It’s like a giant faucet. It takes all of that water coming down from way up north from the snow melts and all. It’s pouring down. And that’s why you have all those empty fields along the highway where you have the farming area.”
He added a new insight: “You know you have the best land in the country just about, but they took the water away. And what would that do to your forest fires? You could let the water — I mean, you have so much water.” …
Read the full article at Washington Post
Washington Post
“We’re going to solve your water problem — you have a water problem that is so insane, it is so ridiculous, where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea. And I just met with a lot of the farmers who are great people, and they’re saying, we don’t even understand it. … They have farms up here, and they don’t get water. I said, ‘Oh, that’s too bad. Is it a drought?’ ‘No, we have plenty of water. … We shove it out to sea.’ … The environmentalists don’t know why. They’re trying to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish.”
— Donald Trump, then a candidate for president, at a campaign rally in Fresno, California, on May 27, 2016
“As you probably heard, I released billions of gallons of water going in from upstate California from the most northern parts of California, probably comes in from Canada to a certain extent. Thank you very much, Canada, we appreciate it. … They had all that water pouring out right into the Pacific. They had a big valve, like a giant valve as big as this room and they turned the valve, takes one day to turn it, and they face it toward the Pacific Ocean and the water, all that was coming down, all millions and millions of gallons coming down. They put it into the Pacific Ocean, which for the Pacific Ocean is like a drop of water. But for California, it would have been unbelievable. So, we did it. I’m very proud of the fact that we did it. We did that against a lot of heat and a lot of environmental nonsense.”
— President Trump, remarks while signing executive orders, April 8, 2025
Follow Fact-checking politicians
This is the story of how, under Trump, a falsehood with a kernel of truth becomes ever grander — and eventually becomes ineffective policy.
California water policy is notoriously complicated. At its core, it involves a constant battle between cities and farms, each side wanting more. A politically connected group of Central Valley farmers gave Trump their version of the truth during a meeting in 2016, and he has hung on to that tale ever since.
There is a three-inch silvery fish — called a delta smelt — that needs fresh water to thrive. (It is considered functionally extinct, because no fish have been counted in seven years of surveys since 2018.) But the water flows ordered by California officials also benefited much bigger fish, such as salmon and other commercial fisheries. The smelt is considered a bioindicator, reflecting the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which is on the edge of California’s agriculturally rich Central Valley and which empties into the Pacific Ocean.
But water from Canada doesn’t make it to Southern California — and there is no “giant valve” that can direct it. Instead, the Army Corps of Engineers released 2 billion gallons of water from two reservoirs it controlled — where it largely went to waste so Trump could claim success.
The 2016 campaignIt all may have started in 2007 with a failed golf course deal.
That year, Trump toured a failing golf course called Running Horse in Fresno. “What Trump saw was more than 400 acres of mostly weeds, several huge trenches for sunken fairways and only two holes with grass,” the Fresno Bee reported. “Course construction stopped last year and Running Horse filed for bankruptcy protection in April.”
Trump made an offer, then pulled out — and by 2014, an almond orchard had taken over the site.
Then, in early 2016, Johnny Amaral, a politically connected water authority executive, organized a roundtable for Trump with 50 farmers to discuss water issues and a tour of the Central Valley. Amaral did not return calls from The Fact Checker, but he has described the session in interviews over the years.
Amaral told the Los Angeles Times that the message to Trump was that “the Central Valley is not out of water because of the drought, but because the water is mismanaged.”
“When you see it with your own eyes, it’s hard to unsee this — it’s maddening,” Amaral told Bloomberg News. “I think he saw this problem with his own two eyes and decided that’s a problem that needs to be fixed.”
Trump may have been primed to think this because, in his mind, the Fresno golf course deal fell apart because of a lack of water. “I was going to take it over and do a beautiful job,” he told a campaign rally in 2016. “Fortunately, I didn’t do it because there is no water anymore because they send all the water out to the ocean, right? I got lucky that I didn’t do it, but I would have changed the water. I would have worked it out, no worry.”
According to the Congressional Research Service, farmers already get most of the water that is delivered via the federally run Central Valley Project — about 5 million acre-feet (1.629 trillion gallons). An additional 600,000 acre-feet goes to municipalities and industry, 410,000 acre-feet to wildlife refuges and 800,000 acre-feet to fish and wildlife needs. That means farmers get more than 70 percent of the water in the Central Valley. Another network, the California-run State Water Project, delivers about 70 percent of its water to urban users, including 25 million people in San Francisco Bay, Central Valley and Southern California.
“Many farmers get their water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and they get it with huge pumps that pull it into canals. These pumps are so strong they suck fish into them, and drain so much fresh water that more salt water comes in and harms all of the fish,” said Thomas Holyoke, a political science professor at California State University at Fresno. “Farmers talk more about the smelt, I think, because it has less of an obvious commercial value.”
It has always been a delicate balance in California, where battles over water allocation are legion. More water to farmers means more crops — and higher profits. The flip side is that more water to farmers could mean fewer fish and dirtier water in a fragile ecosystem. But that nuance was lost on Trump, who channeled the farmers’ frustrations to describe the existing policies as “so insane … so ridiculous.”
“It warms our heart a little bit that he still talks about a 30-minute or hour drive around the east side,” Amaral recently told Politico, referring to Trump’s 2016 visit.
Trump’s first term“We’re spending a fortune in California because of poor maintenance and because, frankly, they’re sending a lot of water out to the Pacific to protect the smelt. And, by the way, it’s not working. The smelt is not doing well. But we’re sending millions and millions of gallons, right out into the Pacific Ocean, of beautiful, clean water coming up from the north — or coming down from the north.”
— Trump, during a Cabinet meeting, Aug. 16, 2018
The saga of the delta smelt became a regular feature of Trump’s talking points during his first term. But the first time he mentioned a “valve” was in 2018. The word slipped into his usual spiel about his visit to the Central Valley.
“I look at these incredible, beautiful fields, and they’re dry. It’s like dry as a bone. And I see hundreds and hundreds of acres as far as the eye could see, and then you’d have a little, tiny, little green patch in the corner. Just beautiful — green. It’s so beautiful. So rich … I said, ‘You must have a tremendous drought going on.’ This is like, three and a half, four years ago. … They said, “No, we have so much water, we don’t know what to do with it. But they don’t let the water come down to us.’ … I believe he said they’re trying to protect a smelt. … Nobody knows what a smelt is. I still don’t know what a smelt is. … And they have a — like a valve, but massive. Like from a faucet, but massive. And they turn it and the water goes pouring … out into the Pacific Ocean, where it means nothing.”
Trump mentioned the valve again in 2020, when he signed an executive order on California water accessibility that would have pumped more water into the Central Valley. (A federal judge blocked the order after critics argued it would harm endangered species and salmon runs.)
“Just have the valve go in a little different direction. Okay? This one is easy. I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t do it. Someday you’ll explain to me politically why that’s good that you’re rationing water when you have so much water.”
On the campaign trail in 2020, the valve became a regular feature of Trump’s pitter-patter when discussing California water issues and the “tiny, little fish” responsible for the problem.
“In California they have tremendous amounts of water pouring down from the north. You look at it — and yet they have no water. And they’re going to ration everybody. And all they have to do is let the water come down. You heard what they do with the water? They send it out into the Pacific Ocean, they have this massive valve up north, and as the water comes pouring down from the snow and all beautiful nice, clean water, they send it out. Because there’s a tiny, little fish that they are trying to save.”
— Trump, interview with Mark Levin on Fox News, on Sept. 20, 2020
In that interview, a fresh idea occurred to Trump: “Los Angeles, you can’t even water your grass. You’re not allowed to water your grass. You have a home for $25 million, you can’t water the grass.”
The third election campaignTrump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. He immediately started running again — and his stories about California water got even more unmoored from the truth.
First, the delta smelt became even more of a bad guy.
In Los Angeles, “I stayed at one of those houses … $35 million house, and you can’t take a shower. Honestly, it’s a bad way of life. … This is all because Gov. Gavin Newsom and the radical left Democrats, extremists, and the people that run this state, in order to save an extremely unimportant, very little and nonproductive fish, the delta smelt. Did you ever hear of it? … That little sucker is causing you to not be able to clean yourself, the delta smelt. Because of that delta smelt, you don’t have any water. You don’t have farms. You don’t have anything.”
Then, the valve became a giant faucet — in Canada — that would direct water all the way to Los Angeles.
“In order to protect a certain little, tiny fish called a smelt, they send millions and millions of gallons of water out to the Pacific Ocean, way up north, never even gets close to here. … You have millions of gallons of water pouring down from the north with the snow caps in Canada all pouring down. And they have a, essentially, a very large faucet. And you turn the faucet, and it takes one day to turn it. It’s massive. It’s as big as the wall of that building right there behind you. And you turn that, and all of that water goes aimlessly into the Pacific. And if they turned it back, all of that water would come right down here and right into Los Angeles.”
Trump’s remarks confused experts in Canada. The Columbia River runs through British Columbia into the states of Washington and Oregon, but there is no infrastructure to bring that water to California, let alone to Los Angeles.
A month later, Trump even told an L.A. radio station that he had seen the faucet: “Millions of gallons of water, millions and millions — I’ve seen it. It’s like a giant faucet. It takes all of that water coming down from way up north from the snow melts and all. It’s pouring down. And that’s why you have all those empty fields along the highway where you have the farming area.”
He added a new insight: “You know you have the best land in the country just about, but they took the water away. And what would that do to your forest fires? You could let the water — I mean, you have so much water.” …
Read the full article at Washington Post
Associated Press
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Porterville Irrigation District Kills Partnership Amid Accusations of Power Mongering
Porterville Irrigation District abruptly ends its groundwater management agreement with the city, sparking outrage among local growers. (SJV Water/Lisa McEwen)
PID board votes to exit city partnership, plans hearing to form its own groundwater agency amid grower criticism.
Accusations of power seeking and lack of transparency dominate the contentious PID board meeting with growers.
Past controversies involving PID leadership in the Eastern Tule GSA fuel distrust among Porterville farmers.
Less than two months after agreeing to join forces with the city of Porterville to manage area groundwater, the Porterville Irrigation District board voted Tuesday to abandon the partnership and hold a public hearing on whether to form its own groundwater agency.
That hearing will be held May 13.
The move provoked anger among growers who crammed into the irrigation district’s tiny board room to ask pointed questions and have their say.
“Everything seemed fine, and now things have changed,” said dairyman Matt Kidder. “You even voted to move ahead with the city. You want the power. That’s the problem.”
“Well, yeah!” responded Sean Geivet, general manager for the irrigation district. “I am comfortable with this board. They are elected by all of you guys. So that’s who I represent.”
Porterville Vice Mayor Ed McKervey said the only power struggle he saw was between the irrigation district and its own growers. He accused the board of deciding to kill the city partnership before Tuesday’s meeting even got underway.
“I’m looking at you guys thinking I don’t want to be involved with you,” McKervey said.
Partnership Dissolves Amid Anger
The breakup is a continuation of the strife that has dogged the Tule subbasin as it struggles to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which mandates aquifers be brought into balance by 2040.
Squabbles and lawsuits have centered on the southeastern portion of the subbasin where some growers are blamed for overpumping so much that the ground has collapsed, sinking a 33-mile section of the Friant-Kern Canal.
“I like control.” — Sean Geivet, general manager of Porterville Irrigation District, on the benefit of the district forming its own groundwater agency without the city of Porterville
All of this is playing out as most of the subbasin was scheduled to begin adhering to sanctions issued by the state Water Resources Control Board after it placed the region on probation last September. Those include that growers meter their wells, report extractions and pay an annual $300-per-well registration fee plus $20 per acre foot pumped. Farmers in two Tule GSAs were excluded from those reporting and fee sanctions.
Those exemptions didn’t include Porterville Irrigation District farmers.
In an attempt to get out from under state sanctions, water districts and GSAs have been frantically revamping plans and management structures.
Board Makeup Becomes Sticking Point
But the partnership with the City of Porterville, seen as advantageous to both entities when it was approved in February, suddenly soured for board members of the Porterville Irrigation District.
The point of contention, apparently, was the make-up of the board for the nascent Porterville Groundwater Sustainability Agency. The city and irrigation district would each fill two director seats, while a fifth seat had yet to be determined.
Irrigation district legal counsel Aubrey Mauritson had said the fifth board member couldn’t be an irrigation district board member as that would violate the Brown Act, which prohibits a majority of board members from discussing district business outside of noticed public meetings.
Growers wanted someone from their ranks to fill that seat but that idea apparently didn’t fly and the irrigation district wanted out.
Dairyman Matt Kidder. (SJV Water/Lisa McEwen)
Geivet said separating from the city would allow the irrigation district to tailor its own groundwater agency.
“I don’t see any downside to it,” he said of dumping the city. “I like control.”
McKervey said the irrigation district’s fear of losing control was “more perception than reality.”
“I think it’s wrong what you’re doing,” he told board members at Tuesday’s meeting. “We thought we had synergy and optimism. But this power struggle thing I don’t understand.”
Regardless of whether the city and district form a joint GSA, the two entities still need to work together as parts of the city are in the irrigation district’s boundaries and the city buys surface water from the irrigation district.
Transparency and Representation Concerns Raised
Grower Armando Leal said after the meeting that he is in favor of the irrigation district forming its own GSA, but feels the GSA board should not be a carbon copy of the irrigation district’s.
“We need more outside representation. Who’s going to do that? If it is only the district board, I have issues with that,” Leal said.
But irrigation district board member Brett McCowan pointed out it’s common practice for water district boards to also run GSAs. That’s how the Lower Tule River, Tea Pot Dome, Vandalia and Delano-Earlimart irrigation districts all operate.
“For speed, efficiency and agility, it’s a lot simpler if, as a continuation of this board meeting, we hold our GSA meeting,” McCowan said. “You guys are making this seem like we’re doing this differently than anyone else.”
Growers at Tuesday’s meeting don’t feel the irrigation district board is transparent enough nor representative of their needs.
“We came up with the rules that most people liked. What did you want us to do, stop everybody that was pumping and let them go broke to satisfy Friant? We compromised and Friant still sued.”
Porterville Irrigation District Board President Eric Borba on the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency’s groundwater crediting system, which he helped create and which Friant Water Authority alleged caused overpumping that damaged the Friant-Kern Canal.
They also pointed to both Geivet’s and irrigation district board president Eric Borba’s involvement in the embattled Eastern Tule GSA as reasons they didn’t want them running the new GSA.
The irrigation district had been a member of the Eastern Tule GSA.
Borba had been that board’s president when Eastern Tule created a groundwater crediting system that allegedly allowed farmers to continue overpumping, exacerbating subsidence on the Friant-Kern Canal. The Friant Water Authority sued Eastern Tule.
“We came up with the rules that most people liked,” a clearly irritated Borba snapped. “What did you want us to do, stop everybody that was pumping and let them go broke to satisfy Friant? We compromised and Friant still sued.”
That didn’t strike growers as a successful groundwater management strategy.
“That’s the confidence factor you can give us?” dairyman Kidder asked. “That makes no sense.”
With Porterville Irrigation District and the City of Porterville likely to form their own GSAs, that will bring the Tule subbasin GSA count to 13. It started the SGMA process back in 2020 with six GSAs.
Lisa grew up in Tulare County. She has reported on agriculture and other issues for a wide variety of publications, including, Ag Alert, Visalia Times-Delta, the Fresno Bee and the Tulare and Kings counties farm bureau publications.
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San Luis Obispo Tribune
Pumping from the Paso Robles groundwater sub-basin continued at unsustainable levels last year — with agriculture extracting more water than domestic well owners and municipal water systems combined, according to a new report.
The sub-basin, which pools underground from the area east of Highway 101 to north of Highway 58, was designated as “critically overdrafted” by the California Department of Water Resources. …
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