The North Kings GSA Advisory Committee met on Friday, January 11, 2019 at the Clovis Police Department’s Public Safety room. There were half a dozen or better new people showed up who have never been here before. The outreach appears to be taking effect. Chairman Scott Redelfs, Director of Public Utilities Clovis called the meeting to order at 1:30pm. We did self-introductions and the minutes from the November 2018 meetings were approved.
Subcommittee updates were next and Adam Claes with Fresno Irrigation District gave the technical committee report. He said the committee is working on gathering data and producing a water budget. The membership of the NKGSA wants to control their own problems and solutions. The Groundwater Sustainability Plan is working on the sustainable management criteria. The current heavy lift is groundwater levels. Finding the sustainable groundwater level is a very important function of SGMA compliance. The problem with subsidence and the other undesirable results are also being addressed. The monitoring wells have been established at two per township.
Lisa Koehn, Chair of the Administrative/Fiscal Subcommittee reported there was not a meeting last month and nothing new to report.
Membership/Outreach/Communication Subcommittee Chair Brandi Swisher reported an estimated 300 people attended a SGMA workshop at Century Elementary School in Clovis where a high-level overview of NKGSA’s challenges were presented. Another similar workshop is being planned for the Kerman area.
Ron Samuelian, Engineer/Consultant with Provost & Pritchard gave a Kings River Sub Basin coordination update. He explained there is a common language being developed to meet the conformity sub-basin wide as required by SGMA. This will ensure common measurements and data is used by everyone so accurate results can be obtained.
During public comments there were folks from an area located east of Clovis asking about the operations of the Big Dry Creek flood control reservoir in their area. Alan Hoffman, GM Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control said it takes an actual act of congress to redo the operational guidelines but his group is working on the matter. Former Fresno County Supervisor Phil Larson asked about the use of FID banking facilities role in SGMA. FID GM Bill Stretch said the banking and ponding basins do play a role and he is always looking for more ways to put water in the ground. I invited everyone to Fresno State’s Water Marketing Seminar on January 24th and a lady asked if there will be any mechanism to prevent price gouging. She was told to go to the seminar and find out. It was also mentioned that SGMA could curtail more development. A representative from Fresno County, Bernard Jimenez said within a few years he can see some changes in land use due to water availability. Redelfs and Mike Carbajal, City of Fresno PUD both said they don’t see any development allowed that can’t bring in a sustainable surface water supply.
The room where this meeting meets is starting to fill up so Redelfs said they might be having to move to the city council chambers. And with that the meeting adjourned at 2:15pm.
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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.
