By Joel Hastings
President Roger Schuh called to order the board meeting of the Chowchilla Water District at 1:33 p.m. on December 10, 2025 in the board room of the district offices. While Director Russell Harris was not present, six members of the public were on hand along with this reporter. Schuh acknowledged the visitors and invited public comment but there was none at this point and the agenda was confirmed with no changes. Schuh said comment would be in order as requested for the agenda items.
Groundwater Sustainability Agency
Moving to the GSA board session, the group heard from Resource Manager Doug Welch on the phone this time complaining of very painful back spasms. He said that at a meeting on November 21, the triggers around subsidence had been revisited with Davids Engineering. The question was how much indication did there need to be among the 12
measuring devices around the District before action should be taken to reduce groundwater demand. Schuh asked if one parcel had a problem, did that mean there had to be a GSA-wide response. Welch said that it is currently being discussed and there would be another meeting tomorrow (Thursday, Dec. 11) at 3 p.m. to develop further guidelines. He said these would be brought back to the board at the next meeting. The pressure is on though, since the revised GSP submitted to DWR said a plan would be ready by January 1, 2026. Realistically, there can be a plan in place by March and DWR is not scheduled to review the GSP until July, Welch said.
At this point, local grower Steve Massaro asked how you could determine if subsidence within the district was caused by pumping in the area outside the district. Welch acknowledged it was difficult to tell. Board member Vince Taylor said that it looked like Massaro wasn’t very happy with that answer and there was rueful laughter all around… exactly the challenge the district is facing. Welch continued saying the engineers have developed algorithms and modeling to come up with a chance of being right – maybe 50 : 50 or maybe 80 : 20. Massaro added that if the GSA is doing all it can but other if parts of the county aren’t, then there will be problems. Schuh said all we can do is meet our GSP and then put pressure out there to reduce groundwater pumping.
Terianne Silveira, district dairy farmer who was attending with her husband, Johnny, asked what is a GSP? Schuh explained it’s a groundwater sustainability plan required by the state under SGMA. He said the GSP is the plan showing goals will be met to bring groundwater into balance. Director Nathan Ray added that we don’t have any water allocation structure in place like a lot of other GSAs do. GM Brandon Tomlinson said the state wants us to have a plan on the shelf in case certain triggers occur.
Johnny Silveira asked if the state is making those GSAs have pumping limitations. Schuh commented that it’s not like subsidence isn’t a real problem. He cited the situation with the Friant-Kern Canal, damaged by subsidence requiring a $600 million repair project. Ray continued saying that areas that have come down harder often don’t have surface water supplies like Chowchilla Water District.
Schuh explained that even if white areas surrounding the district reduced water extraction to the sustainable yield of about seven inches, we are still overdrafted. Welch added that the overdraft is about 30,000 to 40,000 AF per year or 13 percent of district water use. Schuh said we need to get our house in order and then we can go push on everybody else.
Ms. Silveira then asked how many GSAs in the state don’t have approved plans. Welch replied somewhere in the range of 30 to 50. He said that the biggest part of the Chowchilla GSP is a goal of 1000 acres of recharge basins by 2040 and we already have 500 acres done. There are Flood MAR plans in the event of wet years and there is the possibility of increasing the height of the Buchanan Dam adding 15,000 AF… also we will look at land fallowing.
Water District
With no further discussion, Schuh reconvened the district board meeting at 2:00 p.m. Office Manager April Ellison presented the treasurer’s report saying receipts for November were $271,362.01, disbursements amounted to $854,094.92 leaving a balance on December 1 of $20,137,408.52. It was noted a final payment was being made on December 1 on a bond, paying it off entirely, so it is not reflected in this balance sheet but will be shown in next month’s report. The warrants list of bills paid through December 10 was approved in the amount of $1,522,526.49 including that $833,896.21 bond payment. Vice President Karun Samran asked about making an announcement and it was noted a message in January could be made after all funds had cleared and the bond discharged. The report was approved and then GM Tomlinson said the budget figures were on track. There were no questions from the directors or the public.
The minutes of the November 12th meeting were approved.
A resolution to approve a bylaw update that would add a sentence imposing a $200 penalty on any bylaw offense. Tomlinson explained that when the updated bylaws approved last month had been sent to the county for final approval, the county counsel said the state requires that the penalty be included. With that explanation, the updated bylaws were approved.
At 2:06 p.m., President Schuh declared open a public hearing on the 2025 Water Management Plan update as required every five years by the Bureau. Welch said that there had been no public comments received during the previous 30 days so at this point, comment could be received, the hearing could be closed and action taken to approve.
Massaro asked why the plan included the possibility of expansion of the district. It was unclear where this reference was occurring and on further examination, this possibility was not on the Management Plan but instead in the report from Davids Engineering identifying steps that could be taken in creating a water allocation plan to be included in the GSP. All the directors said that while the engineers had mentioned this as a technical possibility, no one was considering this as a realistic action. The reference had been to improving
infrastructure to several parcels within the district so that they could actually receive surface water, which Welch said amounted to about 2000 acres. Schuh summed up the clear agreement that there never had been discussion of actually expanding the district boundaries.
Massaro asked about tiered charges to encourage use of the district surface water. He said you have farmers who use district water even though it might be more costly than pumping who realize it preserves ground water. Schuh pointed out that those in the district who pump in effect make the district water available for others to use. Ray added that subsidence is not spread evenly across the district and that we need to push as much surface water to those areas with subsidence to reduce their pumping. Schuh said at this point there are no distinct management zones within the district. He also affirmed that the board will not use any new penalty fees as a revenue source.
With this discussion completed, Schuh closed the public hearing, and the water management plan was approved.
A last item of new business was consideration of two bids for construction of recharge basins in the area of the Berenda Slough. A bid of $166,000 on 49 acres on the east side and $137,000 on 37 acres on the west side had been received from Foida Land Leveling in Ceres, Calif. Former director Mike Mandala local grower and now a member of the audience asked about some pricing indicated in the two bids. After discussion, it was agreed to approve the bid on the 37-acre project and get more information about the larger bid. This timing would allow the contractor to complete current work underway on what’s known as the Happy Boy basin and then begin the new project while clarification was made on the other.
Chris Mayo presented his operations and maintenance report. Storage in Eastman increased by 1,458 AF to 14,679 AF as of November 30. At Millerton Lake 48,680 AF had been added so the month end total is 305,406 AF. He continued saying that structural work had been done on Cornaggia Pond, and at Berenda Dam while burning and mowing had been completed along two other canals. To improve recharge, nearly 40 holes had been drilled in Cornaggia, also. His written report detailed work in the shop on seven trucks and three pieces of equipment.
With a 2:30 call overdue with the district counsel, the board went into closed session at 2:45 p.m. The agenda showed performance evaluation of the general manager along with a real property negotiation and three items of anticipated litigation.
DISCLAIMER OF RESPONSIBILITY; Waterwrights strives to provide clients with the most complete, up-to-date, and accurate information available. Nevertheless, Waterwrights does not serve as a guarantor of the accuracy or completeness of the information provided, and specifically disclaims any and all responsibility for information that is not accurate, up-to-date, or complete. Waterwrights’ clients therefore rely on the accuracy, completeness and timeliness of information from Waterwrights entirely at their own risk. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not represent any advertisers or third parties.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2025 by WaterWrights.net
Chowchilla Water District – PO Box 905 – 327 So. Chowchilla Ave., Chowchilla, CA 93610 559/665-3747 website www.cwdwater.com
Staff: General Manager – Brandon Tomlinson; General Resource Manager – Douglas Welch
Board: Roger Schuh – President, Karun Samran – Vice President, Russell Harris, Nathan Ray and Vince Taylor
PROFILE: Formed in 1949, the Chowchilla Water District serves about 85,000 acres situated in southern Merced County and northern Madera County on the eastside of the San Joaquin Valley. The District serves about 85,000 acres in southern Merced and northern Madera Counties. It’s over 400 water users have an average farm size of about 162 acres. Buchanan Dam was constructed in 1975 and is operated and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The maximum capacity of the dam is 150,000 acre-feet and has a maximum conservation capacity of 140,000 acre-feet. The District also has appropriative water rights issued by the State Water Resources Control Board to divert water from the Chowchilla River. The Madera Canal supplies water from Friant Dam to the Chowchilla Water District. The District has contracted with the Bureau of Reclamation for 55,000 acre-feet of Class 1 Water and 160,000 acre-feet of Class 2 Water. With Madera ID, the District owns the Madera-Chowchilla Water & Power Authority which operates the Madera Canal and four hydroelectric power plants located on the Madera Canal.
The Chowchilla Subbasin’s DWR # is 5-022.06
