Mascot Hal teaches water conservation

Ag water negotiations

Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District Water Conservation Coordinator Liz Block has produced colorful magazines for young students that explain where Tehachapi area water comes from and how to be a good steward of the resource. Block worked with consultants on "Project Wet" to provide teachers with the magazines and other water conservation materials.

The magazines – one written for the second-grade level and the other written for the fifth-grade level – introduce the mascot Hal the Horse to narrate the story of Tehachapi water. Block showed the fresh-off-the-press magazines – along with stuffed horse Hal -- at the Sept. 21 meeting of the water district board of directors at the Golden Hills Community Services District board room.

In other water district business, the board tabled a normally non-controversial agenda item "amending and restating the rules and regulations for the sale, use and distribution of water," as its approval was stalled by objections to a separate proposed water banking agreement with SunSelect Produce (also tabled). Several Cummings Valley agricultural growers at the meeting objected to provisions in the SunSelect agreement.

John Martin, in his last board meeting as district manager before his retirement, explained in his staff report, in which he recommended approval of the water banking agreement: "SunSelect built two 32-acre state-of-the-art hothouses in Cummings Valley in the last three years. They plan to build two more in the near future. Because of their very large financial investment, they desire to have an assured water supply. As SWP [State Water Project] allocations are subject to wide fluctuations, and the supply of native groundwater in Cummings Basin is subject to the judgment, they would like to provide for themselves an assured water supply by banking imported SWP water for later recovery if necessary. This is the district's first agricultural customer desiring to bank imported water... This is a positive step in our efforts to balance groundwater pumping in Cummings Basin with the Basin's native safe yield [the amount that can be taken out of the ground water without depleting the resource]. SunSelect desires to bank 1,000 acre-feet between now and 2022, but sooner if possible."

Land owner Robert Schultz said the agreement did not specify "enough limitation on water banking."

"In trying to make it fair, it doesn't work the same as M&I [Municipal & Industrial]. M&I is stable year 'round. Ag is up and down. This needs a review." He said the water banking plan should be tied to the management [rules and regulations] plan The producers, Schultz said, "felt they were being pushed through too fast." The board agreed to give the growers until Oct. 7 for responses and comments on the SunSelect water banking request, and to revisit the matter at the Oct. 19 board meeting.