Agriculture Today - June 2008
Special Section: Water

Working together pays off for Kings River water users

By J. Randall McFarland
Kings River Conservation District

Confrontation and controversy, which tend to be two of California’s water supply watchwords, have taken a back seat on the Kings River.

They have been replaced by unprecedented cooperation and a broadly based planning project that recently earned a major state grant totaling more than $6 million in support of two major, regional groundwater recharge projects aimed at capturing and storing more Kings River floodwater.

Steering the effort is the Upper Kings Basin Water Forum, which over the past few years has brought together water agencies, cities, counties and many Kings River stakeholders, including environmental community representatives. The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has facilitated the Forum’s activities, which have resulted in development of an integrated regional water management plan.

The Kings River Conservation District is deeply involved in the Water Forum, as are the Fresno, Alta and Consolidated irrigation districts; the Kings River Water Association; Raisin City Water District; the cities of Clovis, Parlier, Fowler, Fresno, Kingsburg, Sanger, Selma, Reedley, Dinuba and Kerman; Fresno, Kings, and Tulare counties; and numerous organizations with interests in river resources.

The recent award of more than $6 million in grant money under Proposition 50 funds is exactly the sort of outcome Water Forum participants hoped to have from a collaboration that was unprecedented among the region’s rural and urban water agencies.

“Now that we have a comprehensive water management plan in place, we must aggressively implement solutions to water supply issues identified in the plan,” said David Orth, KRCD General Manager and a Water Forum member. “The Water Forum is all about working together to identify regional needs.  It is no surprise that dealing with the Kings River service area’s groundwater overdraft has emerged as a significant issue. Water Forum members recognize that groundwater deficiencies have the potential to be divisive among water users. They prefer constructive regional solutions.”

The grant will be used to help fund two projects:

• Fresno Irrigation District and Kings County Water District, to expand the existing Kings County Water District’s Apex Ranch Water Banking Facility south of Kingsburg by 220 acres for recharge and recovery to provide an estimated between 10,000-14,000 acre-feet of dry-year water yield.
• Alta Irrigation District, to construct a proposed Traver Groundwater Banking Facility to capture available surface water supply during the project's first phase in order to enhance local groundwater levels and in the future support a surface water treatment plant that will reduce the use of lesser quality groundwater for municipal purposes in the easterly portion of the district.

Orth said these projects, and others that remain under study, are crucial.  Groundwater overdraft within the Kings River basin during the past 40 years amounts to some 6.6 million acre-feet. Overdraft occurs when water demand exceeds the available surface water and groundwater supplies.

Such a continued groundwater overdraft is not sustainable, Orth said. “We have realized that the urban growth pressure within the region, coupled with the need to sustain the agricultural economy, makes it imperative that we improve water resource management in the Kings River basin,” he said.

The Water Forum, with the assistance of the DWR, developed an integrated water management plan to qualify for the state’s grant program. The DWR a few years ago began encouraging regional strategies for management of water resources. The upper Kings River region includes the greater Fresno area and parts of northern Tulare County downstream to the Kingsburg area.

The Water Forum’s plan has sparked planning and study efforts directed at increasing water supply reliability, improving and protecting water quality, providing additional flood protection, and protecting and enhancing aquatic ecosystems and wildlife habitat.

KRCD Deputy General Manager David Cone called the grant “a huge accomplishment for our region.” The Water Forum’s grant proposal was one of the highest ranking grant applications in the state.