SJV Water is a nonprofit, independent online news publication covering water in the San Joaquin Valley. Lois Henry is the CEO/Editor of SJV Water. She can be reached at lois.henry@sjvwater.org. The website is www.sjvwater.org.
While some groundwater managers in the beleaguered Tulare Lake subbasin look for ways to come together on pumping limits in order to comply with state mandates, the giant J.G. Boswell Farming Company has remained silent and intractable.
The company, which controls the El Rico Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA), still plans to allow so much groundwater pumping within its boundaries that it could sink the old Tulare Lake bed — including the small town of Corcoran — by another 10 feet.
That’s only a foot less than it planned back in 2021 when the subbasin, which covers most of Kings County, submitted its first management plan required under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
While El Rico wants 10 more feet of subsidence, other GSAs in the subbasin have agreed to allow less than six extra feet of subsidence, according to multiple presentations by Amer Hussain, the subbasin plan manager and an engineer with Geosyntec.
The issue has become pressing as three of the region’s five GSAs are looking at conducting a study of the subbasin’s “native yield.”
Native yield refers to how much water naturally accumulates through rainfall and runoff that’s otherwise unaccounted for, not including imported surface water or river flows that are owned. Setting the region’s native yield is crucial to know how much pumping can be allowed without causing negative consequences, such as subsidence.
But the group must first agree on a maximum subsidence limit then divide it between themselves, Hussain said.
That could be difficult with one member, El Rico, holding out for significantly more subsidence than the rest of the group.
Even knowing the current land elevation of each GSA is difficult as El Rico has not shared that information with the rest of the group and its boundaries are blank on satellite maps.
Land elevation maps of Kings County show where land is sinking except in the El Rico Groundwater Sustainability Agency, which almost exclusively covers J.G. Boswell Farming Company lands. El Rico has said it intends to allow so much pumping it will sink the Tulare Lake bed, including the town of Corcoran, by another 10 feet.
Department of Water Resources satellite data from 2015 to 2024 show land elevations for every other GSA in Kings County, except El Rico, which covers most of the old Tulare Lake bottom.
“There’s just nothing out there to calibrate,” Hussain said.
A representative of El Rico could not be reached.
“Boswell doesn’t want to share information. They don’t like us to be in their business, but they need to answer to the state,” said Doug Verboon, a Kings County Supervisor and board member of the Mid-Kings River GSA.
In 2024, the Water Board put the Tulare Lake subbasin on probation for lacking a coordinated plan that would, among other things, stop pervasive, damaging subsidence.
“I don’t know how we haven’t coordinated; we’re on our 11th year,” Verboon said in reference to SGMA’s passage in 2014. “I don’t see this coming together.”
It’s not just Boswell and the El Rico GSA, several GSAs aren’t comfortable with each other, he said.
“One (agency) won’t have meetings, we aren’t involved in what El Rico does, Mid-Kings is trying to be transparent, South Fork Kings is on its second Proposition 218 election. We aren’t there yet.”
Verboon referred to the Southwest Kings GSA, which has canceled three of its scheduled meetings in 2025 and seven of its 11 meetings in 2024. Southwest Kings is controlled by the subbasin’s other major farming entity, Sandridge Partners, which is helmed by John Vidovich.
It’s unclear if either El Rico or Southwest Kings will participate in the planned native yield study.
Monserrat Solis covers Kings County water issues for SJV Water through the California Local News Fellowship initiative.
