This article deals with the controversy over water use and the efforts involving multiple entities, including the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority and the Indian Wells Valley Water District to arrive at an affordable water replenishment plan in the northwest tip of the Mojave Desert.

An engrossing and equally rare dispute between two bureaucracies in which one is a primary constituent of the other is playing out in that region of California comprising the northwestern corner of San Bernardino County.
The issue of contention is water. It is a given that the cost of delivering the elixir of life to the furthest extension of the Mojave Desert is rising and will continue to do so. The larger question is whether agricultural production and industrial activity will need to end in the region. The controversy over the theft of water from Eastern Sierras has begun anew, as the long history of water disputes has opened a new chapter. Started in the early 1900’s when the fledgling Los Angeles Department of Water and Power “bought borrowed and stole” the majority of water rights in Inyo and Mono Counties triggering a series of water wars over the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct which exports water to Los Angeles to this day.
More recently, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (AGMA) of 2014 brought with it the cataloging of the Indian Wells Valley as one of 21 groundwater basins in the state to be classified as being in critical overdraft, another 127 basins have been classified as high priority. These designations triggered the creation of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority (Groundwater Authority) and approximately 266 similar Groundwater Sustainability Agencies in its efforts to overcome the depletion of California’s groundwater basins.
Both the Indian Wells Valley Water District (Water District), the local water company, and the Groundwater Authority are committed to achieving a balance of water use and water recharge within the valley by 2040, but differences have arisen over how they should comport themselves in getting there.  Tense and adversarial Public Meetings, lawsuits and rhetoric from both sides give credence to the local phrase, “Whiskey is for drinking and Water is for Fighting For”.
After the Groundwater Management Act went into effect, the Groundwater Authority quickly determined that a 50-mile pipeline extension from California City, where the Antelope Valley East Kern County Water Agencies (AVEK) furthest extension of water imported from the California Aqueduct ends was the correct solution. The Water District, along with numerous local entities including the Real Estate Assn, Chamber of Commerce, Economic Development Agency considers that proposed project/solution to be exorbitantly expensive and believes it would likely cause economic harm as well as double the rates paid by the Indian Wells Valley Water District customers for their water.
The Groundwater Authority has applied for and represents that it has secured a federal Water Resources Development Act of 2024 (WRDA) grant. While authority officials confidently claim the federal government has earmarked $150 million to be used by the authority and related agencies to defray a substantial portion of the cost to construct the pipeline and pay for related infrastructure and appurtenances, in fact the federal government has tentatively committed no more than $50 million toward the undertaking, and there is no guarantee of any funds being put up beyond that.
The Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency (AVEK) apparently has storage capacity for State Water Project water in or near California City, and what is needed is a pipeline from California City to reach a new “terminus tank” or some order of cisterns in the vicinity of Ridgecrest, as well as water rights from the State Water Project to put water into this pipeline.
The direct cost of constructing the pipeline to bring in the imported water together with related facilities would be approximately $307 million, according to the groundwater authority.
On top of that would be the cost of water acquisition, the cost of upstream conveyance to the AVEK pipeline in California City and the cost of downstream integration of the new water supply into Indian Wells Valley Water District facilities even if the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority succeeds in getting the full $150 million federal Water Resources Development Act of 2024 (WRDA) grant
While the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority assumes the project can be completed for $307 million, what the district says is a more sober assessment of the costs, using the most up-to-date cost schedules and allowing for inflation over the course of the project construction, is $390 million. In addition, the yearly cost of operating the water importation system to be borne by the residents of Indian Wells Valley would run to $10 million. The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority’s solution would entail having to pump 3,000 acre-feet uphill on an annual basis. Indian Wells Valley Water District officials believe there are more economical ways to deal with the challenge.
The Water District believes that the Groundwater Agency has significantly underestimated the annual recharge into the basin and ultimately funded new scientific studies to determine if that were true. These studies are part of an ongoing Comprehensive Adjudication lawsuit, one that would both determine the recharge, but also determine the water rights of all users in the Indian Wells Valley. At stake, the recharge determined by the Court will be a key determining factor in whether the pipeline, or some other solution is implemented.
Other options that the Groundwater Agency believe are insufficient to solve this problem include 2,000 acre-feet of effluent from the City’s Wastewater Treatment Plant that are placed into sealed ponds and lost to evaporation, discharges from the LADWP Aqueduct that occur in wet years but are not captured and allowed to be percolated into the basin, a program to replace the thousands of evaporative coolers with modern AC and Solar power among other ideas.
As this drama unfolds locally The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power conveys by gravity on average about 325,000 acre-feet of water from the Owens Valley in Inyo County to Los Angeles right through the Indian Wells Valley. However, the long standing tensions between LADWP and Mono and Inyo Counties is preventing this option from being a viable solution, despite the fact that the $300M+ pipeline would only be pumping uphill at most 3000-4000 Acre-ft per year. The Water District also notes that years like 2023/2024 which were unusually wet wet the LADWP spilled/jettisoned/dumped 12,000 acre-feet of water into the Indian Wells Valley. Said General Manager George Croll: “We think we should be capturing that.”
According to the latest Groundwater Authority report for 2024, total water use in the Indian Wells Valley is approximately 20,000 Acre-feet annually. Major users include, China Lake Naval Air Station at 1,500 acre-feet of water per year, The Water District at 5,500 acre-feet of water per year, Farming operations between 8,000 and 9,000 acre-feet per year, Searles Valley Minerals at 2200 Acre-feet per year, some 800 small well owners at about 800 Acre-feet per year, plus a few hundred Acre Feet for several small communities.
In its Adjudication lawsuit the Water District hopes to change the Groundwater Authorities determined recharge of 7650 Acre-feet per year to something closer to 14,000 Acre-feet per year in order to end the possibility of an Imported Water Pipeline.
Accordingly, the water district is looking toward that discrepancy being resolved, with the Phase 2 Adjudication trial to determine the recharge scheduled for June of next year. However, the Groundwater Authority lobbied for and has a Bill in the State Senate (AB 1413) that would deny the court the option to review the Water Districts science and cement the Groundwater Authorities recharge number as not challengeable in court.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority has objected to the water district’s water rights adjudication effort, asserting that the adjudication interferes with the groundwater authority’s efforts to manage and reduce the overdraft and that the adjudication will have the effect of benefiting certain agricultural interests and Searles Valley Minerals, who are the most profligate users of water in the basin, while threatening, or at least challenging, the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake’s federal reserved water rights.
The Indian Wells Water District objects to the fashion in which the Indian Wells Valley Ground Water Authority has exploited its ties to Assemblywoman Diane Papan to fashion Assembly Bill 1413, which prioritizes a groundwater sustainability plans being pursued by state-sanctioned groundwater authorities over the findings and water-use allotments arrived at in water rights adjudication processes in state court, thus obviating the effectiveness of the water rights adjudication the Indian Wells Water District is pursuing in Orange County Superior Court.
The Indian Wells Water District feels that it has reasonable alternatives to the approach the Indian Wells Valley Ground Water Authority is taking but that with Assembly Bill 1413, the strategy the water district would prefer to pursue will not even be considered.
While the water district and the groundwater authority and others are in essential agreement that a sustainable water use plan needs to be formulated and adhered to and, further, that ultimately the key to sustainability consists of discontinuing agricultural uses in the valley, there is substantial and meaningful disagreement between the two entities on the method of achieving sustainability and how to administrate such a regime.
It is the Indian Wells Valley Water District’s contention that the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority formulated its strategy to overcome the basin overdraft without having first completed a scientifically sound survey of the extent of the overdraft and the full range of methodologies that could be applied to overcome it.
According to the water district, it has, at considerable expense, undertaken such metrics and is therefore in a better-informed position to be postulating solutions to the overdraft than is the groundwater authority.
The district considers the prospect of utilizing in Indian Wells Valley a small percentage of the water that the LADWP is importing to Los Angeles to be a potential workaround to the water shortage, but that is not a viable solution because officials in both Inyo and Mono counties are absolutely opposed to LADWP using water diversions to anywhere other than Los Angeles, considering such a ploy to be a further means of stealing the Western Sierra region’s water.
Litigation engaged in by Mojave Pistachios has been concluded by a settlement/stipulation/agreement that confers 16,000 acre-feet of water on the company, after the provision of which the company is no longer entitled to use any water within the valley. In practical terms, this means the thirsty company, which utilized roughly 4,000 acre-feet of water annually, will dry up and blow away in about five years.
If the solution the Indian Wells Groundwater Authority is gunning to apply is in fact actuated, the Indian Wells Valley Water District’s customers will see a doubling of their water rates and will be further saddled with an additional property tax assessment in the neighborhood of $500 per year.