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Monday’s top story: Gaming the water system

Posted by: Maven on May 25, 2009 at 8:32 am

From the Contra Costa Times, a recap story of the recent Media News Investigation:

Just before Interstate 5 climbs the Grapevine out of the San Joaquin Valley is a massive underground reservoir that its owners say is the largest water banking project of its kind in the world. Here among the tumbleweeds, sand and scrub, 15 miles west of Bakersfield, the gush of crystal-clear water appears as curiously out of place as the great blue herons cruising along the bank’s six-mile canal.

The Kern Water Bank, which was owned by the state Department of Water Resources from 1988 to 1995, is now in the hands of Kern County interests and is 48 percent owned by Westside Mutual Water Company, a private water company controlled by Beverly Hills billionaire Stewart Resnick.

It is 32 square miles of desert where one natural river and two artificial ones pass: the Kern River, which originates in the southern Sierra Nevada; the California Aqueduct, which carries Delta water more than 400 miles to a reservoir in Riverside County; and the Friant-Kern Canal, which takes water to valley farmers from behind a dam on the San Joaquin River.

“We have lots of water conveyance facilities that bring water past the Kern Water Bank,” said Jonathan Parker, general manager of the Kern Water Bank Authority. “That makes this location pretty unique.”

In wet years, the water bankers deposit water from the rivers into ponds where it percolates into the Kern River’s alluvial fan.

In dry years, they make withdrawals, which is why on a tour of the bank earlier this year water was gushing out of the ground from pipes and bubbling up into the canal from underground structures.

Read more from the Contra Costa Times by clicking here.

May 25, 2009 · Filed Under Water Banking

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