Judge temporarily halts state plan to monitor groundwater use in crop-rich California region

HANFORD, Calif. -- A justice has temporarily blocked a program by a California authorities h2o committee to instrumentality implicit monitoring groundwater usage successful a information of the crop-rich San Joaquin Valley, according to a transcript of the determination obtained Tuesday.

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Kings County Superior Court Judge Kathy Ciuffini issued a impermanent restraining bid halting the State Water Resources Control Board's program for the Tulare Lake Subbasin until an Aug. 20 hearing. The ruling came aft the workplace bureau successful the mostly cultivation region of astir 150,000 radical filed a suit saying the program exceeded the board's authority.

"This is simply a immense archetypal step," said Dusty Ference, enforcement manager of the Kings County Farm Bureau, adding the results of the suit could impact workplace communities passim the state. "Everybody should beryllium paying attraction to this."

RELATED: Kings County Farm Bureau suing State Water Board implicit Tulare Lake subbasin probation

At the bosom of the combat is simply a instrumentality California enacted a decennary agone to modulate the usage of groundwater aft years of overpumping and drought led to problems with h2o prime and onshore sinking. Under the landmark law, section communities indispensable signifier groundwater agencies and draught plans to sustainably negociate their groundwater, and those that don't tally the hazard of authorities monitoring oregon intervention.

That occurred earlier this twelvemonth successful the lawsuit of the Tulare Lake Subbasin, which covers a agelong of Kings County. The State Water Resources Control Board placed the subbasin connected alleged probationary presumption aft authorities officials deemed that section communities had failed to travel up with a sustainable program - a determination that enactment authorities officials, alternatively of section ones, successful complaint of tracking however overmuch h2o is pumped from the ground.

Many farmers feared the imaginable of pumping caps and fees could wounded concern successful Kings County, which is astir halfway betwixt Los Angeles and San Francisco and a large shaper of milk, pistachios and processed tomatoes.

The State Water Resources Control Board said successful a connection that it disagrees with the impermanent order, which suspends the request that groundwater pumpers study their h2o usage successful the critically overdrafted subbasin.

"This request is an important portion of the probationary process nether the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which protects groundwater resources for the payment of each Californians," the connection said.

Groundwater accounts for astir 40% of California's h2o proviso successful an mean twelvemonth and adjacent much successful adust years, according to the authorities h2o board.