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Tulare County water commission reviews 2024 drought data, bottled-water enrollments and SB 552 compliance needs
Summary
At a Tulare County Water Commission meeting, staff summarized 2024 permitting and the county's bottled-water program, and discussed work to comply with SB 552 by mapping private well data and assisting small water suppliers.
The Tulare County Water Commission heard a drought update and county efforts to comply with state drought planning rules, including work to compile private-well data and support small water suppliers required to meet SB 552 planning standards.
The report showed a sharp drop in environmental-health permits statewide: county staff said 270 permits were issued in 2024, down from 322 in 2023 and nearly 1,000 in 2022. County staff also reported the county's bottled-water program currently serves 1,800 households, of which 273 enrollments are due to drought impacts and the remainder are for contamination-related needs; staff said there were no pending enrollments or wait lists and no new enrollments in December.
Commission staff said Tulare County is using a state-funded effort to augment its drought and water-shortage contingency work after the Board of Supervisors adopted the requirements of SB 552 in 2023. Staff described two related priorities: creating a mapping tool to locate private wells and their depth/groundwater-contour risk, and helping small suppliers meet SB 552 requirements.
County staff said updating parcel fabric and integrating it into the county's permitting system (Palms) delayed the private-well mapping effort but that the county's GIS contact provided assessor parcel numbers to consultants this fall and the consultants have begun work. Staff also said they are coordinating with local Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) managers so any tool built could be used by both the county and GSAs, either as a shared data repository or as interoperable layers to be pulled by partners.
On SB 552's small-supplier requirements, staff explained the bill separates small suppliers into two groups: systems with 15 to 999 service connections and systems with more than 1,000 connections. While larger systems face more extensive drought- and response-planning obligations, the county told the commission the 15-to-999 connection systems still face specific requirements, such as having a secondary water supply, which staff said is often infeasible for very small, disadvantaged systems. Staff said some systems had obligations last year but that the Division of Drinking Water is now pressing those systems to develop plans.
Commissioners and staff discussed options for building a shared framework GSAs could populate, and noted one existing local example: a Kings County contact worked with a consultant (Provost & Pritchard) and local well drillers to collect and ground-truth well data, but county staff said that level of effort is not feasible countywide without partner contributions. Staff said they are exploring a repository approach to accept GSA-provided data.
County staff characterized private-well data collection as a challenging but valuable tool for identifying wells at risk during drought and for targeting assistance to households reliant on private wells.
Staff did not present a timeline for completion of the mapping tool, and no formal action or vote was taken on the item at the meeting.
