Growers in northwestern Kings County are fed up with a lack of representation on their groundwater agency and what they say has been an excessively slow process to get their voices heard.

The board of the South Fork Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) currently has five seats. It has been working since May to add two more to represent the northern portion of the GSA near Lemoore.

Because the five existing seats are held by government agencies, the process to change the board configuration has been slow, said Johnny Gailey, manager of the GSA.

“It’s being circulated back and forth between attorneys of the different agencies and there are still edits being made to it; the draft is not final,” Gailey said during the GSA’s July 17 meeting.

That didn’t mollify growers.

“Sometimes I wonder why we’re meeting to be honest with you,” said Frank Coelho Jr., chair of the GSA’s grower advisory group at its July 10 meeting. “We should stop all meetings until we get that representation.”

Growers Gary Quintel and Julie Freitas agreed.

“Yeah, I didn’t even want to come to the last (grower) meeting,” Freitas said.

Seeking a Direct Hand in Creating Policies

Growers have also been hesitant to comply with GSA policies that they haven’t had a more direct hand in creating.

That includes registering their wells’ locations, depths and production amounts, something the GSA has been working to gather with limited success.

Quintel said he hasn’t registered his wells specifically because of the lack of representation. Other growers shared that sentiment during the July 10 growers advisory meeting.

“I think we should make it clear that people are hesitant because they don’t have representation (on the board),” Coelho Jr. said.

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South Fork Kings GSA Map

28% of of Wells Registered Through July 17

As of July 17, 283 wells in the GSA have been registered, 101 of those are domestic. That’s about 28% of the area’s wells, according to Gailey.

Well registration for South Fork Kings landowners was due July 1. There is no penalty for late registration.

The GSA held two well registration workshops in March to help landowners register their wells through the GSA’s web-based platform.

South Fork Kings, like many GSAs in the Tulare Lake subbasin, has established metering and registering policies in an attempt to keep local control under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).

SGMA requires overdrafted areas to establish plans to bring aquifers into balance by 2040 by a combination of increasing groundwater recharge and reducing pumping.

Last year, South Fork Kings was one of five GSAs in the Tulare Lake subbasin placed on probation by the state Water Resources Control Board for lacking an adequate groundwater plan.

Under probation, farmers must meter and register wells with the state as well as report all extractions. Probation also requires farmers to pay the state an annual $300-per-well registration fee, plus $20 per acre foot pumped. The state has said that money is needed to administer the region during probation.

Those probationary sanctions, however, are paused in the Tulare Lake subbasin pending litigation.