The North Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency Advisory Committee met on Friday, January 10, 2025 at the Clovis Police Department public room. This is one of my favorite meetings because it’s close to home and by the time it finishes mid Friday afternoon – se
riously there aren’t many reasons to go back to work. No one wants to listen to me ramble on about buying advertising or be interviewed for a story, provided I could find someone willing to talk or make a decision. It’s nice to step out of this meeting and one could literally walk to old town and hang out. Here it is the middle of January and its 65 degrees outside. Perfect hanging out on the corner weather. The meeting was on Zoom and Executive Director Kassy Chauhan asked everyone to use their outside voices since there was only one microphone.
The Meeting
Vice Chairman Adam Claes sat in for Chair Scott Redelfs. The meeting was called about 1:30pm. Chauhan told everyone about the policy and public comment and the other boilerplate of a public meeting.
The first thing to do was to go around the room and introduce the voting members and anyone else who wanted official role call credit. There were no desire from anyone to speak out during public comment. The September and November minutes from last year were approved save one minor change. The financial reports were given by the graceful and kind Lisa Koehn and approved as one would expect.
Subbasin Coordination
Ronny Samuelian of Provost & Pritchard gave the coordination update. He said he’s bringing no actionable items to the table today. The Groundwater Sustainability Plan revisions, the coordination agreement update and the five-year periodic evaluation are all due by the end of the month.
Samuelian said an interconnected surface water MOU with Madera Subbasins GSAs, Friant Water Authority, the US Bureau of Reclamation and the San Joaquin River Restoration https://info.beehero.io/about-usProgram has been signed.
The revisions to the GSP is not a formal plan amendment. An amendment, under SGMA opens a can of worms process that takes six-months to put in place. Therefore the Kings River Subbasin GSAs have all agree to revisions. There is still transparency followed and buy-in from all the GSAs.
The Coordination Agreement can be modified and some methodology changes were agreed to for improvement. Samuelian said just one Subbasin Period Evaluation will be submitted. The revised GSP and modified Coordination Agreement make up the bulk of the evaluation from what I could see.
Administrative Items
As an advisory committee no votes are binding on the NKGSA board itself. But to bring that board the best advise it can, this committee has opted to vote to determine how to advise the board.
Claes said the first item needed approval. It was to adopt the revised GSP and everyone was fine with that. Next the Kings Basin Coordination Agreement was voted on and approved.
Next Samuelian explained there really isn’t an amendment to the GSP. However a Periodic Evaluation is required by SGMA. Every five years a subbasin has to layout for the Department of Water Resources the success and challenges of a subbasin’s GSP. DWR will issue a set of questions for evaluation. He said the first, five-year period began in 2020 and two out of the first five years were extremely dry, it was a big drought. This altered the original timeline goals in the GSP. That was covered under the GSA. So far NKGSA has addressed more than 30 corrective actions issued by DWR since 2020.
It is note worthy to pay attention that there will be only one Periodic Evaluation prepared to cover the entire Kings Subbasin. As I’ve brought up many times this the first SGMA law and this is the first Periodic Evaluation since its inception.
Chauhan reminded the committee this isn’t an action item for the board. It is required. Samuelian pointed out when SGMA was written there was a timing glitch. This report won’t include all five years because the 2024 annual report hasn’t been completed yet and can’t be included.
The next item, 6 d. has too long a title to list. What it is about is: the NKGSA has been asked to sign an MOU between the Bureau, Madera County GSAs and the Friant Water Authority to pledge coordination and efforts to work on interconnected surface water evaluations on the San Joaquin River. The committee recommended sending this along to the board.
Fresno State Foundation (it supports the California Water Institute) would like to team up with NKGSA to do a state grant funded study to form a plan for recharge in the San Joaquin Valley. Anytime spent on this will be reimbursed to the GSA. Local farmer and President of the Fresno State Ag One Foundation, Pat Ricchiuti was at the meeting and he asked for more detail. He is head of the Ag Foundation but his wife Vincie is head of the CSU Fresno Foundation. You can see the possibility for confusion. Anyway, the committee will recommend the board agree to participate.
Chauhan said the well permitting tracking program is coming along well. In 2024, 229 well permits were involved and so far in 2025 five have been considered. In a complementary effort there is a well registration program. It sounded like results have been elusive but there have been so many other shiny things and there hasn’t been much of a push to get this running hard. However, in the not too distant future if you want to get some grant funded meters you’re going to have to register the well.
Workgroup Updates
Claes thanked Koehn for her hard work to get this together. Chauhan said there are efforts underway to get a cost share program for domestic wells mitigation.
Water Report
Claes gave the committee the same report he gave his Fresno Irrigation District board last night. He posted a chart showing the average rain and how much has landed in the Tulare Lake Basin. There was twice as much rain in November than average and about half of the average in December. So far no rain at all in January. Northern California has been very wet, Central California less than average precipitation and Southern California has been desiccated. However, the overall Sierra Nevada snow water content is higher than average for this time of year.
Member Agency Report
The City of Kerman’s representative Jesus Gonzalez gave a presentation on the Lion’s Park Recharge Project. He said Kerman is totally dependent on groundwater. A pond was placed in a park and used for recharge. Kerman is a nice community with some great features. It’s the gateway to the west side. This recharge basin should yield 261 a/f annual. Chauhan said while this isn’t a large slug of water it is a good amount of community effort. The North Kings GSA and Fresno ID have been bringing in surface water. There was a short video featuring Fresno County Supervisor Brian Pacheco, FID General Manager Bill Stretch, Kerman Mayor Maria Pacheco and Chauhan. It was a classic cold, foggy day for the dedication. Also, there was the bonus of hearing a echo chamber. Gonzalez said Kerman’s overdraft is a bit more than 2,000 a/f so, this is going to help and there are more recharge dedicated in Kerman than just one-tenth.
Ex O Report
Chauhan reminded everyone to stay up to date with their SGMA project implementation. She gave the board a look at the recent outreach efforts on social and online. Refining and improving the NKGSA’s well monitoring network is key to guiding efforts to achieve SGMA goals. DWR has been promising help with additional, dedicated and telemetrically connected wells that can give real time data.
She also reminded everyone the Form 700 report must be filed. This shows a board member’s financial status. Next month Chauhan will be bringing out the goals and priorities report. Right now it’s the last minute scramble to be sure to finish the goals and priorities of this year.
That was that for this month. The next meeting will be on Valentines Day. Adios, be good to yourselves and each other.
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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.
MEMBERS: Bakman Water Company, Cities of Kerman, Fresno and Clovis, Fresno County, Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District, Garfield Water District and Fresno ID. Chairman Scott Redelfs and Vice Chair Adam Claes.
STAFF: Kassy Chauhan-Executive Director, Lisa Koehn-Treasurer, Andrew Aller-Attorney
DWR # Listing: Basin San Joaquin, Sub Basin Kings 5-022.08