The North Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency Advisory Committee met on Friday, April 12, 2019 at the Clovis Police Department’s Community Room. Chairman Scott Redelfs, City of Clovis kicked things off at 1:30pm. We hadn’t met since January so Redelfs had us go around the room and introduce ourselves. The minutes and the agenda were approved and off we went.
The first item was updates from the ad hoc committees. Adam Claes, Fresno Irrigation District reported on the technical committee happenings. He said the NKGSA has about a negative 20,000 a/f overdraft or to put it another way – a 20,000 a/f surplus. He explained the various members of the GSA have different contributions and needs. The technical committee is doing the heavy lifting of quantifying the conditions of groundwater in the GSA. There is a 50-well indicator network for monitoring groundwater levels. This can be used to establish a measurable objective and a minimum threshold for groundwater. Claes spoke with Trevor Joseph who used to work at the DWR. He was told the constituents should be mentioned in the Groundwater Sustainability Plan. The GSP should be released in July or there won’t be enough time for public review, workshops and rewrites.
Lisa Koehn gave the administrative/fiscal report and there wasn’t much to say. Brandy Swisher gave the outreach committee report said there was a workshop with Hmong Southeast Asian farmers that went very well. Claes said this group would have been difficult to reach without the help of the Asian Business Institute. The bulk of the farms were less than 20-acres and often on leased land. Claes said most of them were using drip because the fear of bringing in weed seeds in surface water; a real problem with hand tended vegetable crops. Someone said that only happens in Consolidated ID. The next public outreach will be to small landowners on the westside of Fresno. These five-acre ranchettes have wells but are not directly served by FID or the City of Fresno. Swisher said an outline of a working GSP is on line at the NKGSA website.
Local Fox affiliate KMPH 26 is hosting a townhall with panelists focusing on SGMA. They want help from NKGSA and the other GSAs in the basin.
Provost & Pritchard’s Ron Samuelian said DWR has indicated it will not accept the overriding GSP until every GSA in the sub basin has completed their GSPs. He said the Kings Sub Basin is one of the better sub basins to be in and NKGSA has far fewer problems than other GSAs. All the GSPs in the sub basin are moving along and all the GSPs and common language will be developed and used uniformly. This is taking place and terms should be uniform enough to cut and paste from each GSA’s GSP. One of the criteria the plans will be evaluated upon is; will the GSA’s GSP negatively impact neighboring GSAs?
Under public comments Gary Serrato, current executive officer of NKGSA reported a flock of new XO candidates will be interviewed next week and the goal is to have a new XO in place by June. And that was that with no closed session.
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2019 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.
MEMBERS: Bakman Water Company, Cities of Kerman, Fresno and Clovis, 
Fresno County, Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District, Garfield Water District and Fresno ID. www.northkingsgsa.org
NKGSA’s DWR identifying number 5-022.08
