#California aqueduct map free

Joshua Nugent, a spokesman for Mojave Pistachios, inspects some of the 210,000 pistachio trees his agricultural company has planted across 1,600 acres near the city of Ridgecrest. The China Lake base, one of the largest users of water in the valley, has federal reserve water rights that make it exempt from the replenishment fee and pipeline costs passed on to ratepayers. That increased the water costs for Mojave Pistachios and Searles Valley Minerals by as much as $6 million per year. Tensions have already flared over an aquifer 'replenishment fee' of $2,130 per acre-foot imposed on a select few users by the groundwater authority in 2021. “They’ve completely ignored numerous alternatives that would meet their goals while substantially decreasing the financial costs and environmental impacts,” she said. Steinfeld, an attorney representing Mojave Pistachios, whose 210,000 trees materialized like a green oasis about a decade ago across 1,600 acres of scorched desert. “It’s a pipe dream - one so bizarre it’s almost laughable,” said Amy M. Read more: A new SoCal underground water storage project aims to keep supplies flowing during drought That kind of talk has prompted Searles Valley Minerals, in the community of Trona, and Mojave Pistachios, a tree nut company on the west side of Ridgecrest, to rise up in a fury, declaring the proposed pipeline is part of a groundwater sustainability plan that forces them to bear an allegedly unfair and illegal economic burden that threatens their continued existence. “More importantly,” she said, “the pipeline is a solution to a chronic problem: Wells are going dry because folks are tapping the aquifer’s supply of fresh water faster than it is being returned to the basin naturally by rain and snowmelt off the Eastern Sierra Nevada range.” “I don’t see Ridgecrest turning into the next Las Vegas or Victorville, but it could benefit from some additional development,” said Carol Thomas-Keefer, general manager of the groundwater authority. 5.4 and 7.1 magnitude quakes that rocked the area in 2019. Read more: A river runs through Bakersfield? Judge rules the Kern River must be allowed to flowĭraining the aquifer would also sink Ridgecrest’s hopes of a bustling future of new homes, restaurants, and businesses for the 5,900 scientists, engineers and contractors employed at China Lake, which is undergoing about $4 billion worth of upgrades prompted by the 6.4. “Without the base, there’s no Ridgecrest,” Lemieux said.

In 2019, the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, which generates $36 million in state and local taxes and represents a large portion of the local economy, said its top concerns include encroachment on groundwater, suggesting that shortages of its sole source of potable water could force it to shut down and move away. The Indian Wells Valley aquifer lies under a point in the eastern Sierra Nevada range landscape where the corners of San Bernardino, Kern and Inyo counties meet.Įntrance to the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake along West Inyokern Road in Ridgecrest. Eight wells have gone dry in the past year, and about 800 are at risk, officials said.īut this is no classic stop-the-overdraft battle. The amount of water currently flowing into the valley’s underground basin is 7,650 acre-feet a year. Read more: A 7.1 earthquake couldn't kill this Mojave Desert town. That's because state law requires that local agencies bring groundwater aquifers into balanced levels of pumping and recharge. To do so, he said, risks a potential takeover by state officials. 'But we cannot continue overdrafting the region's most important source of fresh water.'

#California aqueduct map free

'The farmers and mining companies are filing lawsuits against us because their groundwater isn't free anymore,' said Keith Lemieux, who serves as both Ridgecrest city attorney and groundwater authority counsel. To hear the authority tell it, the days when landowners could dig a well in Indian Wells Valley and pump to their heart’s content, so long as the water was put to a beneficial use, are over.

That does not include the potentially formidable costs of acquiring water to be conveyed through the pipeline, planning, annual operation and maintenance, officials said. The federal government would pay $150 million of the cost, authority officials say, with the remaining $50 million passed on to ratepayers, including pistachio growers and mining operations recently saddled with a special “groundwater replenishment fee” of up to $6 million a year.