The Kings River East Groundwater Sustainability Agency held its Thursday, October 18, 2018 meeting at the Dinuba City Council Chambers. Before the meeting a new representative for the director representing irrigation/water districts, David Brown of Orange Cove was sworn in. Chairman Steve Worthley opened the meeting at 2:00pm and we all saluted the flag. There were no conflicts of interest and during public comment I gave the first public announcement of what we hope will be a big deal. Waterwrights.net and DisinfectWater will be cohosting with Fresno State’s WET Center and the Center for Irrigation Technology a SGMA Roundtable at FSU on Wednesday, October 31st at 2-4:00 pm. There will be a panel featuring attorney Lauren Layne, Provost & Pritchard’s Ron Samuelian, hydrogeologist Chris Johnson and Daniel Hartwig from Woolf Farms. So now you know too.
The minutes were approved and the board was asked to join in many other agencies, companies and individuals to oppose the permit application for Kings River flood water going to Semi Tropic Water Storage District. The board agreed to sign and letter stating so. It was also noted KREGSA has had a very good return of its billing.
Engineer and de facto General Manager Chad Wegley said KREGSA is 20 percent of the Kings Sub Basin but is only about 15,000 a/f overdrawn. He said the GSP is getting closer and he said it will be refined every five years. He doesn’t expect a lot of work will be completed between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. There was talk about some of the natural streams in the area being very good recharge areas. There is hope with more concerted efforts they may be able to recharge the overdraft away with a could of good years. The board agreed to an agreement North Fork Kings GSA in sharing bond money.
Layne gave her reportsaid SB 929 has passed and special districts are now required to have a website. All that must be posted is the agenda 72 hours before the meeting. Governor Jerry Brown signed more than a thousand bills and only vetoed about 200. There was a court case for $2,900 the City of Berkeley is asking for preparing public acts requests where the city had to develop special computer programs. The requestors said they should only have to pay for copying and the court said nope, not if it requires extra costs beyond copying like this case. The items deal with the police handling of protestors. Environmental Law Foundation sued over the Scotts River in Siskiyou County saying pumping of wells along the river are harming the river. The ELFs won. There was also talk of rescheduling the KREGSA board meetings to every other month after the next meeting in November.
That was about it and the meeting adjourned.
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2018 by Don A. Wright
SGMA The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 calls for the formation of Groundwater Sustainability Areas within Basins and Sub-basins to develop Groundwater Sustainability Plans.
Kings River East GSA Board – Chair Steven Worthley Tulare County, Vice Chair Mary Fast, Buddy Mendes Fresno County, Fernando Rubalcaba Special Districts Drinking Water, Dave Brown Special Districts Irrigation Water, Jack Brandt Alta Irrigation District and Steve Boos Ag Production. General Manager Chad Wegley, Attorney Lauren Layne