By Don A. Wright
The Tulare Irrigation District held its Tuesday, October 8, 2024 board of directors meeting at its rural Tulare Area headquarters and on Zoom. The weather is cooling as it should in October but it was still over 100 degrees in parts of the San Joaquin Valley yesterday. I haven’t heard any complaints about the grapes turning into raisins. But the heat has hampered the tomato crop and I even heard it’s had an impact on almonds.
The Meeting
Things kicked off about 9:00am with Chairman Dave Bixler calling things to order. The minutes were approved. That freed things up to jump right in with the other reports and action items.
Water Report
Very rarely does an average California water year take place. Water Master Marco Crenshaw and General Manager Aaron Fukuda said 2023-24 is the average pearl in the average oyster. Crenshaw said deliveries stopped on September 13th and system maintenance began. Fukuda said there is some supplies left for TID to pay back its water debt from exchanges and trades.
Fukuda said there is an agreement with Weather Tools ready for the scoop on highly accurate inflow projections on the Kaweah River. This will give TID an early look at what to expect for the 2024-25 water year. Six months ahead of everyone else. Friant is also entering an agreement with Weather Tools for the San Joaquin River inflow projections. Keep an eye on this, it could be a massive game changer.
O&M
Superintendent Wayne Fox reported the TID staff went through a defensive driving course last week for safety training. He said most of the basins have been disced, shy about 100 acres to wrap up. Recharge basins need to have the fine silt layer turned often. It can form a barrier. The canal banks are being graded. Unfortunately, crews are having to clear out homeless camp debris. Keeping no trespassing signs maintained is a requirement for the sheriff’s department to act on a crime.
Fox said to keep an eye open for old concrete that can be used for rip rap. That’s the busted chunks lining banks that keep erosion at bay. Fox added the heat has prevented crews from working in confined spaces but they are ready with harnesses and such. There are valves set in vertical concrete pipe and if I understood – metal drums and gravel have been placed around them to help preserve the infrastructure. Pipe has been laid with the proper soil compaction.
One of the consequences of Tulare hosting the World Ag Expo is a massively nasty traffic tie up as hundreds of thousands of visitors overwhelm the local traffic pattern. Exiting State Highway 99 to get to the Expo grounds, offramps back up and the grid slows to a walk.
A series of traffic circles are being installed in an effort to move things along. TID has a pipeline that runs under Highway 99 north of the main exit and weaves its way through the planned upgrades. TID is preparing for this work and doesn’t want to try anything that could interfere with the highway traffic as construction is taking place. I believe I heard staff say bore jacking under Highway 99 to install a box culvert would be the preferable action. I’m not sure how much Cal Trans will be helping.
Financials
Fukuda said Controller Kathi Artis isn’t feeling great and didn’t want to share her germs. So he gave the report. There was some than usual talk about investments. The Local Agency Investment Fund, LAIF, has been notorious in the past for paying very low interest. There have also been scares of the state legislature raiding it for funds. However, this past year it appears LAIF is outperforming three of TID’s total of nine investments. Fukuda wasn’t as graceful as Artis in his presentation, but he got the job done and the board approved.
Fukuda said and Director Dave Martin backed him – things are tough out there for agriculture. And not just ag. Martin spoke about a news report concerning a local family restaurant chain, DiCicco’s, that is closing due to all the regulations in California. Martin said the owners laid out a list of government generated costs and everything he heard mentioned has a correlation in ag. I had not heard of them closing this but there is a 
DiCicco’s in Clovis and it has the best pizza. When I was in high school the restaurant hired local kids. I’ve played their lounge dozens of times. I pray we get serious leadership, grounded in reality in November and things change. We can’t keep dismantling our communities in the name of equity and other biased woke ideas.
Next Fukuda talked about the bills. There is a true up on power costs from the San Luis Delta Mendota division of the Central Valley Project that the Friant Water Authority is liable to pay. As a part of Friant TID has a share of that. The overall bill is like $8 million. Fukuda said don’t get your under-roos wound up as Friant’s CFO Wilson Orvis had done a great job in vetting the figures as well as prepping management to prepare for a monetary ouch*. There was also some talk about the cost of publishing legal notices. The Foothill Gazette out of Exeter is an excellent newspaper and has done good work on covering ag and water. It also has preferable legal ad rates but unfortunately it doesn’t cover enough of the TID area and the district has to pay the higher priced notice.
More than a dozen Red Wing boots were purchased by TID for its work crew. A truck pulls up full of all kinds of boots in various sizes. They cost more than $200 per pair. Sounds like a lot? It’s not, the prices were cheaper than available elsewhere. I need a new pair of work boots. I got some Justins from Tractor Supply and the steel is showing through the toes, the uppers have come unsewn and fox tails are in my socks. And my feet hurt after a day of wearing them. Of course the board didn’t know this and they went ahead and approved the bills regardless of my work boot situation.
Engineering
Next was a short report by Fukuda on engineering matters. The Tulare Irrigation Company, don’t know who they are, have a project that involves a new Derrell’s Mini Storage. TID has a canal that goes through the area of Highway 198 and Road 156. Fukuda said the engineering plans given to TID were not all that was needed. A lack of detail and information was cited as part of the problem. A review is underway.
Management Staff Reports
Fukuda said the Kaweah Subbasin is working on a beefed up coordination agreement. There is no subbasin to subbasin agreement required. However, within the subbasin member agencies of the GSAs now have more flexibility to bring up an issue to the entire GSA. There is also a “parking lot letter” agreement that will help keep things from slipping through the cracks.
The Kaweah Subbasin is up for a probation hearing from the State Board on January 7th. Fukuda said state staff has begun asking harder questions. He takes that as a good sign the Groundwater Sustainability Plan is better developed and giving the state more pause. A well registration program is underway and that should yield some good data. Giving away well data to the government isn’t always a welcome act by a landowner. However, under the Mid Kaweah GSA well mitigation program the idea is to be proactive. Get any domestic well taken care of early and save money upfront on the mitigation program. Knowing the well situation will also help filter out domestic wells that failed due to matters other than water levels. There are a lot of old, poorly designed by today’s standards, wells that are failing due to collapsed casings or clogged screens or half a dozen or more problems.
Friant
Fukuda reported the Friant budget didn’t pass as there was controversy about including the costs of lawsuits against the Eastern Tule GSA in the O&M budget. Subsidence is a problem. The last FWA board meeting had a bunch of US Bureau of Reclamation personnel, including Kristen White and Dr. Don Portz. A good update on the San Joaquin River Restoration
and a promise for more transparent allocations were given in reports to the Friant board. There will be a three day Friant off sight work event in November. This is where the FWA develops its plans for the coming year.
Seaborn Reservoir
With the help of consultant Austin Ewell the Seaborn Reservoir was approved for a $1 million grant for planning. Fukuda and Ewell spoke with the Natural Resources Conservation Service and it turns out the NRCS wanted to control spending of the project money. At first that wasn’t received well. But when the guys found out if the NRCS is involved it opens up future doors for multimillion dollar grants. Of course that made them happier.
Legislation
AB 828 was vetoed. That was a surprise. But a good one for the Valley and common sense government, so rare these days. The bill would have carved out exemptions for having to participate in SGMA. The problem with that is who gets to decide who is exempt. I’m asking, who? A couple of legislators who believe they know how to improve SGMA without consulting the people most impacted by the law? That’s the danger I see from Sacramento – the legislative body continually rewriting SGMA in its own image every two years.
GM Report
This Friday is the ACWA Region Six & Seven meeting where the regulatory arena will be discussed. Fukuda has been invited to speak in Davis by the Contemporary Groundwater Issues Council. The topic is who pays for the chemicals of the past. Fukuda said the cities have been aggressively and somewhat successfully able to hold the chemical
manufacturers financially accountable. There’s no one out there advocating for the non-urban area.
Assessments
One of the things you get built into an irrigation district, is a special district. No, not that kind of special, the district doesn’t ride the short bus. It’s an agency that’s a political subdivision of the state. This gives the district a limited quasi-taxation privilege exercised by setting amounts of income through land based assessments. This is in addition to water sales and grants and other ways to fill the coffers.
Fukuda presented the board with a list of property types and recommended amounts of assessments. He did mention having the information of how much it’s going to rain next year this early would be very helpful and once the Weather Tools agreement is in place that will happen. But for now, there appears to be a need to raise the average assessment by $20 or more. Martin had a few words about this. He said the lowered income from the ag industry’s current markets and regulatory environment has hit us all. At the same time the increase in price is analogous to inflationary pressures.
Fukuda said the district is having to set up for next year without knowing what next year will bring. Martin said so are farmers and until the state government realizes how fundamentally difficult it is making it for growers. The district has some reserve funds that could be applied. After much debate and sorting through options the rate of $95 was set.
Weather Forecasting
Fukuda said there was an investment last year in enhanced forecasting. The precipitation forecast delivered by Weather Tools was spot on. This year Weather Tools is offering accurate inflow data for Lake Kaweah by early November. Fukuda said Weather Tools’ Rob Doornbos has created a model that more closely meets the needs of water contractors. Friant has invested in Weather Tools for the San Joaquin River. There are 18 reservoirs on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada with the inflow information for the upcoming year available in early November.
Fukuda told the board last year’s forecast kept wells from running in the district. He said the value was 50 times over the cost of the Weather Tools forecast. He explained an agreement with Weather Tools comes with confidentiality.
Last year the Army Corps of Engineers wanted to make a flood release and contractors started pulling their water out of the reservoirs early to avoid losing supplies. TID said no and held its water based on Weather Tools and made out.
Fukuda said when he spoke with Doornbos that precipitation isn’t the ideal data point, Doornbos immediately pivoted to inflow to meet the needs of the district. He said Doornbos is like Joel Kimmelshue of Land IQ, he wants to make the customer happy. That did it and the board approved entering a contract with Weather Tools.
There were many other wonderful things that may have taken place at this meeting but it was running a bit long for me to stay tight until closed session. I bailed at noon to make like a baby and head out to another appointment.
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*Fukuda didn’t actually say under-roos. He didn’t say don’t get your panties in a bunch or any other euphemism for getting overly excited. He did say Wilson Orvis did a tremendous job of watching out for the Friant members’ interests.
TULARE IRRIGATION DISTRICT
6826 Ave 240, Tulare, CA 93274 Office: 559/686-3425
Board: David G. Bixler- President, Richard S. Borges, Jr.-Vice President, Scott Rogers, Dave Martin & Michael Thomas
Staff: Aaron Fukuda-General Manager, Kathi Artis–District Controller, Wayne Fox–Superintendent, Marco Crenshaw–District Watermaster & Alex Peltzer-Attorney.
About: The Tulare Irrigation District was organized September 21, 1889. The original proposal for the formation of an irrigation district covering 219,000 acres, extending from the Sierra Nevada foothills to Tulare Lake, was eventually reduced to 32,500 acres. The District continued in this status until January of 1948 when the so-called Kaweah Lands” (approximately 11,000 acres) were annexed. In October of 1948, approximately 31,000 acres, compromising the area served by the Packwood Canal Company were annexed to the District. A U.S. Bureau of Reclamation contract was signed in 1950 providing an annual supply of 30,000 acre-feet of Class 1 water, and up to 141,000 acre-feet of Class 2 water from the Friant-Kern Canal. The District and the Kaweah Delta Water Conservation District have coordinated efforts to enhance the recharge of groundwater within the Kaweah Basin. During high flow times KDWCD may use the recharge basins with the District for recharge purposes. Further, KDWCD has historically provided for a financial incentive program through which the District sustains the level of groundwater recharge from supply sources into the District. This historical program was recently reinstated by both districts in lieu of the District’s plans to concrete-line this canal to conserve the surface water. TID is a member of the Mid Kaweah GSA DWR#-5-022.11
