Kaweah farms find balance under SGMA
… California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act—the state’s solution to groundwater depletion—is projected to result in as much as a fifth of the San Joaquin Valley’s farmland going fallow in the next 15 years. For farmers in the region, their future depends on finding ways to farm while adapting to the new paradigm of groundwater regulation. In November, water managers and farmers in the Kaweah Subbasin, where Wilbur farms, did something no other basin had since SGMA enforcement began last year. After the subbasin’s initial sustainability plan was deemed inadequate, it faced the prospect of state intervention, beginning with a yearlong probation period. Probation would have sidelined local projects and imposed costly pumping fees on growers, more than doubling the amount some local groundwater agencies charge farmers. Two neighboring subbasins were put on probation last year. But the Kaweah Subbasin’s groundwater agencies overhauled their sustainability plan, and state regulators canceled the probation hearing—for now—noting “substantial progress” in the revised plan.
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