Tulare district says allocations and ET monitoring cut groundwater pumping about 13%; DWR and networks push technical assistance

A panel of practitioners described demand‑side tools and early results from GSAs that have adopted allocations and forecast‑informed recharge pilots.

Tomo, cofounder of WaterOne, said his team attends more than 100 GSA and district meetings and provides weekly recaps and a searchable platform to make technical discussions accessible to growers. “We attend about 100 plus meetings…we cover state, order meetings that are critical for a lot of stakeholders,” he said, arguing that easier access to meeting recaps and timely Q&A tools helps growers keep pace with rapid policy changes.

David Cepos, program coordinator for the Groundwater Demand Management Network, summarized a recent community needs survey (~100 responses) that flagged funding, stakeholder engagement and a need for technical assistance as the most common barriers to implementing demand management. The network’s mission is to convene practitioners and channel existing expertise into practical tools for GSAs.

Aaron Fukuda, general manager of Tulare Irrigation District and Mid Kaweah GSA, described a rapid pivot to allocations in 2022: after analyzing groundwater budgets and consulting growers, the GSA implemented an emergency ordinance and adopted evapotranspiration (ET)‑based measurement with LandIQ, an online dashboard and tiered allocation/mitigation/penalty pricing. He said the program produced roughly 13% groundwater savings in 2022 (about 20,000 acre‑feet) and, during the 2023 flood year, growers served as recharge agents by diverting historic volumes to fields to raise groundwater levels.

Fukuda emphasized the practical tradeoffs: allocations were unpopular at first but enabled rapid implementation; the system includes mitigation tiers that eased the transition and penalty tiers tied to state maximums. He said ET‑based measurement allowed the GSA to launch quickly without installing field meters: “The ET models helped us shortcut the measurement part of it because we can do a broad landscape measurement program that was accurate.”

Panelists acknowledged open questions: how to scale assistance for small and diversified farms, how to monitor and mitigate water‑quality risks from recharge, and how to design allocations that avoid creating inequitable outcomes. Both WaterOne and the Demand Management Network said they would support GSAs with databases, pilot projects and targeted technical assistance.