Water fight between two of Valley’s largest growers heads to court
The latest water fight between two of the San Joaquin Valley’s largest growers will continue with heavy equipment intended to block a pipeline project allowed to remain on the banks of the Tulare Lake Canal in Kings County.
The Tulare Lake Canal Company, controlled by JG Boswell Company, moved the equipment onto the canal banks in late January to block trenching for a pipeline by Sandridge Partners, controlled by John Vidovich.
Sandridge filed a restraining order to have the excavators, bulldozers and trucks removed, but Kings County Superior Court
Judge Valerie Chrissakes denied that request Thursday.
Chrissakes said while she disagreed with the “selfhelp” approach Tulare Lake Canal Company had taken in blockading the pipeline, Sandridge hadn’t shown that it would suffer “irreparable injury” if the project were delayed a few weeks while complaints filed by each entity against the other are heard in court.
Those complaints, one by Tulare Lake Canal Company seeking an injunction to stop the pipeline project and the other by Sandridge seeking to stop the blockade, will be heard Feb. 25.
‘WHERE IS THE WATER GOING?’
Until then, the equipment, some sporting the distinctive diamond “B” logo of the Boswell company, remains in place on the canal. Boswell employees are also on site, including a night watchman, according to workers at the canal Thursday.
Though Tulare Lake has said its intent is to protect the canal, it is clearly also concerned about the purpose of the pipeline.
In arguing that Sandridge didn’t meet the urgency requirement for a restraining order, Tulare Lake Canal Company attorney Leonard Herr asked, “Where is the water going? When will it be used? Who is going to use it. Without that information, your honor, I don’t think this case is entitled to the emergency that (Sandridge is) claiming.”
Sandridge said it needs to complete the pipeline and start moving water quickly to “pre-irrigate thousands of acres.” It did not, however, provide any contracts or cropping information as to the need for the pre-irrigation, which Judge Chrissakes noted in her denial of the restraining order.
INTENSE CURIOSITY
The 48-inch Sandridge pipeline has been the subject of intense curiosity since last November when farmers first noticed excavators gouging a giant trench into the earth from north of Lemoore meandering 12 miles south to Stratford and, presumably, ending in the Blakeley Canal. The Blakeley runs southwest next to Highway 41 down to Kettleman City, conveniently near the California Aqueduct.
And that’s the deeper current here. Will this pipeline move water out of Kings County to farmers in Kern County? Or even to the great water bogeyman that haunts so many valley farmers — Los Angeles?
After all, Vidovich, water and pipelines have a history in Kings County.
WATER MOVES REMEMBERED
It will likely never be forgotten that Vidovich sold the rights to 14,000 acre-feet of State Water Project water for $79 million in 2009 to the San Bernardino-based Mojave Water District. That was a permanent water loss to Kings County that many still grumble over.
In 2013, the Lower Tule River and Pixley irrigation districts sued Angiola Water District, whose largest landowner is Vidovich, for over pumping groundwater from a well field in Tulare County and moving it outside the county. Vidovich has said he only moves local groundwater to other lands he farms in Kings County. But water pipelines aren’t permitted or monitored by Kings County, according to the county public works director, so it’s impossible to know if they stop at the county line. And Kings County doesn’t have an ordinance against moving groundwater outside its borders.
When contacted in December by SJV Water about this new pipeline, Vidovich wouldn’t say what type of water it would carry (groundwater? river water? state water?) nor its destination. But in the ongoing legal fracas, a declaration by Sandridge Farm Manager Craig Andrew sketches out the picture.
The line will “transfer well water belonging to Sandridge Partners for irrigation purposes,” Andrew’s declaration states. Water from the Angiola Water District will also be moved in the line, according to a declaration by Angiola General Manager Mark Grewal.
Moving well water to irrigate better ground is another Vidovich hallmark. He has let large swaths of his 100,000-plus acres in Kings County go fallow in order to move groundwater to more productive land, typically fields he owns in the Dudley Ridge Water District in western Kings County. But he’s also moved his State Water Project supplies south to lands he owns in Kern County.
‘REALLY, REALLY NOT COOL’
Boswell has also transferred or sold large chunks of its surface water, both state and Kings River supplies out of the county, over the years, mostly to Kern County.
The difference, Vidovich has charged, is that Boswell continues to farm using groundwater. Something Vidovich declared is “really, really not cool,” in an area that has already sunk more than 11 feet in the past 14 years because of groundwater extractions.
Boswell has declined to answer questions about its water transfers, as well as the amount of groundwater it pumps. A call to Mark Unruh, Tulare Lake Canal Company president, was not returned.
The most recent Boswell-Vidovich beef over the pipeline joins at least two other ongoing legal battles over water.
KINGS RIVER SERVICE AREA FIGHT
The Kings River Water Association, where Boswell is a major rights holder, is suing Tulare Lake Reclamation District 761, controlled by Vidovich, for shipping its Kings River water to Dudley Ridge. The association contends that those lands aren’t in the river’s “service area.”
The case is being heard in Kern County, where now retired Judge David Lampe made a partial ruling last June that river owners are allowed to move their water. A trial date has been set for December 2022.
KINGS RIVER FLOOD WATER FIGHT
Boswell and Vidovich are also on opposite sides of whether Kings River flood water is being fully utilized by its rights holders. If the State Water Resources Control Board decides it’s not, the board could give those rights away.
The Semitropic Water Storage District in Kern County has applied for the flood water that it plans to store on land owned by Vidovich near Kettleman City, between the Blakeley Canal and California Aqueduct. Semitropic has paid him $40 million for an easement and Vidovich would also get a cut of the flood water and be allowed to use the facilities to move groundwater, per the project contract.
The Kings River Water Association, including the Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage District where Boswell is the majority landowner, are fighting Semitropic’s application saying all available water is being used. The Water Board began holding hearings on the issue this past summer.
HISTORIC FIGHTS
This latest stalemate is reminiscent of past Kings County water wars, when Boswell and then rival Salyer Land Company often fought over levees to keep floodwater off their lands. In one epic 1969 flood year, Boswell had installed a series of pumps to move water off its land onto Salyer’s. Fred Salyer went to the levee with a letter from his attorney, an armed guard and a tractor and upended the pumps into the river, according to book “The King of California.”
Boswell bought out Salyer’s land, including its water rights, in 1995 — just one year after Vidovich bought his first piece of Kings County farmland in 1994.