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Kern GSAs say 2025 GSP revisions add monitoring, thresholds and new mitigation tracks
Summary
Kern County groundwater sustainability agencies told the State Water Board their 2025 plan revisions expand monitoring networks, raise minimum thresholds, add a degraded‑water mitigation track and commit to implementation timelines and community outreach.
Representatives of the Kern County Subbasin told the State Water Resources Control Board on Sept. 17 that the 2025 groundwater sustainability plan (GSP) revisions substantially improve monitoring, sustainable management criteria and mitigation capacity.
The 20 GSAs prepared a single foundational GSP with six supplemental "Blue Pages," presenters said, and adopted multiple technical refinements after months of collaboration with Board staff. That work included a comprehensive data‑gap analysis, expansion of the groundwater level network (about 187 representative wells in the 2025 draft, with plans to add additional wells to fill data gaps), and a proposed increase in groundwater quality monitoring (about 55 representative wells in 2024 plus up to 30 new wells proposed in 2025).
"We listened, we delivered," Derek Yurosk, chair of the Kern County Subbasin Coordination Committee, told the Board, summarizing the committee’s effort to incorporate staff comments, raise minimum thresholds at priority wells and expand outreach. GSA presenters said minimum thresholds were raised at 35 wells (about 19% of the monitoring network) on average by 29 feet in the revised plans and that the updated undesirable result definitions include dry‑well mitigation backstops.
GSA staff described a two‑track dry well mitigation program for loss of supply and a separate degraded water quality mitigation track for wells impacted by constituents of concern. Under the groundwater level mitigation track, domestic wells with fewer than five service connections could qualify for up to $90,000 per well for replacement and emergency supply; public supply wells could access a technical assistance track with up to $50,000. GSAs said they are developing a dedicated funding assistance track for state small water systems that could provide up to $100,000 per well.
Presenters also described subsidence action‑plan revisions that accelerate investigations and potential actions (e.g., an investigation after two consecutive quarterly exceedances and consideration of targeted projects after four consecutive exceedances), and efforts to coordinate with the California Aqueduct Subsidence Program (CASP) and other agencies.
GSAs emphasized implementation progress: presenters said roughly 47% of planned projects and management actions are already implemented and that accrued benefits through water year 2024 include an estimated 440,000 acre‑feet of reduced groundwater dependence. They said the subbasin aims to prioritize demand management and use recharge opportunities in wet years to achieve sustainability goals.
Board staff welcomed many of the changes but asked GSAs to confirm remaining items in adopted plan materials and to continue prioritizing monitoring‑gap closures and safeguards for state small water systems. Implementation and funding remain central to whether the technical and programmatic improvements deliver the intended protections.
