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Semitropic Water Storage District August 11, 2021

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Bermad irrigationThe Semitropic Water Storage District board of directors held its Wednesday, August 11, 2021, board meeting on GoToMeetings. The scheduled start was 12:30pm Wasco, California time but there were some technical problems with the audio. General Manager Jason Gianquinto came on at 12:35pm saying the folks in the boardroom couldn’t hear anyone else. But of course they got it fixed. It’s good to have an engineer in the family.

The Meeting

Chairman Dan Waterhouse led the flag salute and there was no public comment. The agenda and the minutes were approved. SWSD Controller Bobby Salinas gave his financial report and presented the board with its bills. The board approved.

Engineer Isela Medina told the board Semitropic has been working with Kern County and the other entities within the county on hazard mitigation. The district has to keep current to be qualified for FEMA funds. These are the funds that help with things like flooding on Pozo Creek. The board passed a resolution and the district is now back in good graces on the FEMA wagon.

Medina then told the board about the two miles of 60” and 64” RCP pipe needed for the XYZ Pipeline Extension project. I’m not making up the name of this pipeline. I’ll have to give Semitropic management a call and find out how that snappy name came into being. Anyway, WM Lyles gave a bid, they do a lot of work for the district. There are several other miles of different sized pipe and there is some in stock at the district yard. This project is more than $855,000 worth of materials, mostly pipe. The board approved.

SGMA

Next Gianquinto told the board the landowner budgets have been prepared and he had Larry Rodriquez of GEI Engineering give the presentation. He said the Groundwater Sustainability Plan needed to be updated with new data gathered since 2018. He said all the methodology has been consistent.All Water Rights

For State Water Project Table A Water 95,200 a/f was figured in as the annual average. There was also 3,400 a/f of Article 21 Water, imports 21,600 a/f and a couple of other sources native yield and banking leave behind. This equaled .25 to .75 a/f per acre of safe yield or a total of 223,734 a/f.  Using a 10-year running average, this time 2011-2020, that total increases to 251,628 a/f annually. If I understood correctly the variance in safe yield is due to changes in precipitation and surface water supplies from the State Water Project. Gianquinto said Semitropic has changed its philosophy since SGMA passed and is importing and banking more water for itself. The board is all for bringing in more flood water. The ET for the district’s land is more than 300,000 a/f so there is still room for improvement.

Guess who’s up for some improvement? Gianquinto said the district is now able to prepare landowners a draft water budget from now to 2040. He also said district staff is prepared to walk the landowners through the process and what the data means. That is a pretty big task. There was a mockup on screen that showed the board what the documentation will look like. It’s a bit of a spreadsheet and fairly complicated. A grower asked if rollover would be allowed and the answer is no. You use it that year or lose it the next. However, the board is willing to consider some alteration of this portion of the rules.

Next it was pointed out the rules and guidelines are going to change soon as the GSP matures. There will be a workshop coming up for the landowners to learn more about how this impacts them.

Gianquinto said the Kern Groundwater Authority has worked out an exceedance policy. He led the board through the provisions in the policy. It includes an early call to action for management zones and other ways to fix the problem. DWR is still reviewing the KGA GSP so this isn’t the final carved in stone version. Waterhouse is also the Chair of the KGA and he said the 16 member KGA wanted to have at least the bare bones layout ready in case DWR calls them on it in its GSP review. DWR has until the end of this year to respond to GSPs and most folks believe the KGA’s will be one of the very last since it is pretty complicated. The engineers and consultants who work on the GSP will have 90-days to rewrite after DWR turns in the KGA comments. Looks like they may be going to work through the holidays.

Gianquinto also said the KGA sent a letter to the State Board regarding the racial equity plan being cooked up in Sacramento. Good for them. If we don’t speak up and challenge the crazy we will get what they want to give us. Don’t be scared, there’s no reason when you place truth first, it will set you free.

Consultant Reports

Semitropic is a pretty big district and instead of hiring a huge number of specialists it does contract out quite a bit of work. The first report came from W.M. Lyles Construction. The gentleman speaking for W.M. Lyles is well known for announcing at the start of his monthly report that he will be brief since the board has the written report. I will trust his in depth version would be epic. As mentioned above Lyles does a lot of work for Semitropic.

GEI also does a lot of work and Rodriguez said his reports never seem as exciting as the others but he soldiered on saying now that he and Gianquinto got the water budget docs under control there are other projects moving forward. He said the groundwater modeling is coming along. It takes a while to complete.

Greg Allen of Redtrac gave his report saying 330 sites have been equipped with metering and telemetric facilities. This has allowed the collection of data showing the amount of energy used to move water around the district and provides the information necessary to determine what cost goes with which slug of water. He said it has been a steep learning curve to calculate the energy bills and checking them against the paper bills. He said there is still a remnant of landowners who are not willing to participate and Redtrac is contacting them directly.

Political consultant Dean Florez said there are five weeks until recall and everything in Sacramento is being driven by that. This is impacting the bills going before Governor Gavin Newsom. There are bills going forward but the federal infrastructure package has a pretty good chunk of change for California water storage. Florez served as a democrat state senator so he has some institutional knowledge. Florez said the recall is getting very close and Newsom is trying to figure out his path. Florez said it would be a good idea to get Larry Elder to tour Semitropic.

General Manager Report

Gianquinto said the district meetings are hybrid for the “itis” in person and online. He said he doesn’t see any change to this year’s five percent SWP allocation but there could be ramification for next year. The State Water Board has issued curtailments and DWR is working on trying to get the State Board to understand storage is necessary. The feds are looking to borrow state water in San Luis Reservoir. Lake Oroville is at its lowest level in history and the power plant there was shut off. It was only a couple of years ago when Oroville had so much water there had to be an evacuation downstream.

Gianquinto reported he met at Westlands Water District with Congressmen David Valadao and Bruce Westerman to discuss drought and reach out to Westerman who is an ally in Washington DC. There have also been discussion about groundwater markets but as Gianquinto said this works when there’s water available, but when water is lacking you can only move some supplies around locally. He said attorney Valerie Kincaid spoke to the California Water Commission about this matter.

Finally, something a lot of folks want to know, the State Board hearing officer for the Kings River appropriation status is not under any deadline to return a decision. How’s that for a box of rocks? Well, I will say this – I thought the hearing officer Nicole Kuenzi did a fine, even handed job at the hearing. She didn’t strike me as one to delay or rush a ruling. It’s a very important subject.

It was mentioned water levels at the north end of the district are dropping and staff is keeping a close eye on the situation. Also security fencing has been improved and the district’s drill rig has been sitting for a little while but may soon be used again.

Closed Session

The meeting went into closed session at 2:06pm giving me plenty of time to get to the small engine repair shop and gripe about my weed eater not starting. I think I may have lost weight pulling that cord in the hot sun. But, back to Semitropic. There were a dozen items dealing with lawsuits and property negotiations, meaning trying to find water supplies. And that was that.

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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  Copyright 2021 by Waterwrights/Don A. Wright.

SEMITROPIC WATER STORAGE DISTRICT 

1101 Central Avenue, Wasco, CA 93280-0877 • 661-758-5113 • mail@semitropic.com

Board: Dan Waterhouse – President, Rick Wegis – Vice President, Tom Toretta – Treasurer, Todd Tracy – Secretary, Philip W. Portwood, Jeff Fabbri, Tim Thomson

Staff: Jason Gianquinto-General Manager, Bobby SalinasDistrict Controller, Isela MedinaDistrict Engineer, Executive Secretary-Marsha Payne, Consultant-Will Boschman, Superintendent-John Lynch & Attorney

About: Semitropic Water Storage District is one of eight water storage districts in California and is the largest in Kern County. The District delivers water to nearly 300 customers for the irrigation of approximately 140,000 acres for agricultural uses. Semitropic also supplies energy to a variety of users and provides groundwater banking and storage services. Established in 1958, Semitropic Water Storage District covers an area of more than 220,000 acres. It began as an irrigation district for the purpose of securing State Water Project supplies to reduce groundwater overdraft. From www.semitropic.com

 

 

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