A group of water users in Kern County’s Indian Wells Valley, California, who disagree with how groundwater has been apportioned, won a legal skirmish last month in a court of appeal but the state Supreme Court may have the final word.
The issue in the high desert basin is whether the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority is using an appropriate “safe yield” figure. Safe yield refers to how much water naturally accumulates in an aquifer each year in order to determine how much can safely be pumped out without putting the basin into overdraft.
Read the story at SJV Water (independent, nonprofit news site covering water in the San Joaquin Valley)