: Begin UPDATE August 10th, 2025

One of the leading selling points used by advocates of SGMA is the idea that the groundwater sustainability agencies are controlled locally. In the case of the Indian Wells Valley, nothing could be futher from the truth.

Resident’s of the City of Ridgecrest were tricked into thinking that they would have control over the Indian Wells Valley’s Groundwater Sustainability Plan. What they got was an infeasible 65 mile long and very expensive pipeline with very expensive imported water (not yet purchased).

Ron Strand’s Facebook Post, July 31, 2025 (Full post is below):

“This week, a courtroom in distant Orange County issued one of the most consequential rulings for the Indian Wells Valley in decades. On July 29, 2025, the court preliminarily determined that the Navy’s Federal Reserve Right to groundwater is 2,008 acre-feet per year (AFY)—far less than the 6,783 AFY the Navy claimed it needed for its future mission.“

City Manager Ron Strand is panicking and lying to the people of Ridgecrest. We’re not aware of any “consequential rulings” prior to Judge Claster’s decision, but we know for a fact that the Navy didn’t claim it needed 6,783 acre feet per year for its future mission. Read Judge Claster’s decision Ron! The Navy testified that they had no future mission requirements that would warrant any amount of water over China Lake’s most recent 10 year average, and the judge gave them 2008 acre feet per year.

Does anyone remember Lisa Beutler, the facilitator from Stantec that was hired by the Department of Water Resources to “facilitate” the “stakeholders” in the Indian Wells Valley in 2022? Lisa Beutler is quite the big wig in California’s water policymaking circles. She’s also a principal in Stantec.

Nothing ever came of the facilitation, but Stantec was able to insert themselves into “pipeline design services” on the AVEK pipeline.

Who is Stantec Inc.?

Stantec, Inc. is a “global ESG” engineering and construction company traded on the New York Stock Exchange and their stock price is up over 300% since 2020! They also have the contract to “restore” the Klamath River to it’s prehistoric ecological state after the dams were destroyed, causing an environmental disaster. For more information, simply search for “Klamath river disaster Stantec” and you’ll get the point.

Controversy surrounded the project, but the Salmon are already migrating up the river where they die in the muck along with other species of fish that thrived in the river;

Benefits flow quickly as historic dam removal restores Klamath River (acse.org)

“The dams, completed between 1918 and 1962, significantly altered the river’s natural flow for more than a century, preventing threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead trout from reaching their spawning grounds. Within 10 days of completing the final in-water work at Iron Gate Dam – an earthfill structure farthest downstream – more than 6,000 Chinook salmon were observed migrating upstream into newly accessible habitat over a two-week period, according to Mark Bransom, Ph.D., CEO of the Klamath River Renewal Corp., the nonprofit established to oversee the removal.”

Companies labeling themselves ESG (Environmental Social and Governance) have fallen out of favor on Wall Street, but not Stantec, at least not yet.

ESG Is a Woke Scam Infecting Our Corporations and Changing Our Nation | Opinion (Newsweek.com)

So it’s fitting that the backlash has arrived. Politicians, investors, and everyday citizens are attacking ESG, insisting that it hurts local industries, delivers subpar returns, and fundamentally changes the vital fiduciary relationship between the investor and the asset manager. Altogether, ESG investing insidiously changes traditional American values, all while never by having to stand before the American people and ask for their permission. But the real danger is to society. ESG is a win-win for climate change activists and social justice warriors who can bypass the ballot box—and thus the will of the people—to implement policy that would have a very hard time getting passed in Congress.

We’d like to know why Stantec, Inc. is billing Provost and Pritchard $1,294,980 for imported water pipeline design services and nobody, including Scott Hayman, the City’s representative on the GA, seems to know anything about it.

Ron Strand, Peggy Breeden, Eric Bruen, Scott Hayman and Kyle Blades are willing dupes. They’ve been had, and you, the residents of the Indian Wells Valley and Ridgecrest, have been had even worse.

If the IWV Technical Working Group is correct, none of this will be necessary to achieve sustainability and Stantec will be able to focus on the Klamath River restoration project. See below for more details.

: End UPDATE August 10th, 2025

August 13, 2025 Meeting Video and Public Comments:

August 5, 2025 (Originally Published)

Indian Wells Valley California

The word for the day is “Hydrogeology”

New Narrative: “We don’t need no stinking pipeline OR the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority to become sustainable, whatever that means.” – Miguel T. Tonnis

Publisher’s Note: What was the California Department of Resources thinking when they approved the IWV Groundwater Authority’s Groundwater Sustainability Plan? They apparently didn’t do their homework.

The federal government of the United States typically doesn’t involve itself in state’s laws regarding water rights. In the case of California’s groundwater law which was passed in 2014 and is named the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), the Department of Defense anticipated the need to secure water rights for military reservations throughout the state.

California Has a Whopping 32 Military Bases

“California has more military bases within its borders than most states: a whopping 32 bases are in California, some from every military branch. The Navy and Marine Corps’ bases are clustered most heavily around San Diego.” – Militarybases.com 

The Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake is home to the nation’s premiere weapons research, design, test and evaluation (RDT&E) laboratories, and it encompasses 1.1 million acres of BLM land reserved by the Navy. The base provides airspace and land-based resources to many allies. The UK, Germany, France, Australia and others use the facility for training and evaluation. China Lake also provides testing for the Navy, Air Force, Marines, and the Army. NASA is currently using equipment designed and tested by China Lake’s 4,260 civilian DOD employees.

If DWR thought the Indian Wells Valley basin would be a test bed for SGMA, they didn’t anticipate the pushback they’d get from a crowd of very intelligent desert dwellers, some of whom serve on the water district board and are DOD veterans. All of them are well versed in the science of hydrogeology as well as the complexity of the Indian Wells Valley’s groundwater basin.

The Navy set a precedent for the DOD’s use of the federal reserve water rights doctrine

The GSP approved by DWR included allocations of federal reserve water rights to the Navy that were calculated to include civilians living off the base. Both the Navy and the City of Ridgecrest argued that the Navy was entitled to water rights for civilians living off base. This was a fundamentally an incorrect interpretation of the doctrine. DWR and the Navy should have known this.

Perhaps California’s Department of Water Resources should have studied the doctrine of federal reserve water rights before they approved the Groundwater Sustainability Plan submitted by the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority in January of 2020.

Three Key Determinations by Judge Claster (Document is below)

• There is no authority supporting the proposition that federal reserve water rights extend to non-reservation property.
• Accordingly, water that does not serve the primary purpose of the reservation is not part of a federal reserved water right.
• The Supreme Court has emphasized that the implied-reservation-of-water rights doctrine reserves “only that amount of water necessary to fulfill purpose of the reservation, no more.”

In short, civilians working at China Lake living in Ridgecrest or anywhere off base do not fulfill the primary purpose of the reservation and in no cases have federal reserve water rights extended to non-reservation property. The doctrine reserves only the amount of water necessary to fulfill the primary purpose of the reservation, no more. Had civilians continued to live in housing on the base, then their water usage would have been included in the allocation of federally reserved water rights.

The Judge awarded 2008 acre feet per year of water rights to the Navy. Although the Navy originally stated that they needed only 2041 acre feet per year to operate the base, the Navy provided no convincing evidence that they would need more water to support their mission in the future.

The City of Ridgecrest’s arguments that future growth and more civilian employees were deemed to be both speculative and unconvincing by the judge. Indeed, Navy official testified that no plans existed for future housing on the base nor were there any substantial increases in the number of personnel or missions planned in the future.

Because the City of Ridgecrest was unable to convince Judge William D. Claster that the Navy’s federal reserve water right extended to civilians living off the base, and because the GSP granted any excess of the Navy’s actual use of water beyond their needs to the Indian Wells Valley Water District, the “credit” applied in the form of the GA’s replenishment fee must now be recalculated or reversed.

SGMA is a Failed Experiment, It’s Created Winners and Losers

Recent actions and lobbying for AB 1413 and AB 1466 by the City of Ridgecrest and the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority have exposed SGMA as a “failed experiment”. This statement was made during a committee hearing in Sacramento by a State Senator who’s a Democrat:

“SGMA was a well-intentioned law. It is a failed experiment. It’s created winners and losers. If you have money, you have power. We’re seeing a lot more fallowed land, and I believe it’s creating more Valley Fever. This issue has to be figured out sooner than later”. State Senator Melissa Hurtado (D-16)

At the same meeting, Senator Shannon Grove told Kern County Supervisor Phillip Peters “You’re on the wrong side of this issue my friend”. For more information, please see “Watch Your Step”:

What’s Next? More Controversy: AB 1413 and AB 1466, Brown Act Violations, A Grand Jury Investigation? Recall Petitions?

It would be an understatement to call the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority a dumpster fire. At this time, Kern County Attorney Phill Hall, who’s the mover and shaker behind the “legal strategy” of the GA as well as the attorney who’s been managing the GA since its formation, is off the case. His future involvement with the GA remains in doubt.

City Attorney Keith Lemieux sat in for Hall at the last GA meeting, and his activities orchestrating the City’s actions behind closed doors have also come under fire.

Council members Kyle Blades and Scott Hayman, the City’s representative on the GA over the last 7 years have also resulted in a contentious split on the council, with Councilman Skip Gorman and Mayor Travis Endicott struggling to rein in City Manager Ron Strand and his activities behind the scenes, including the preparation of a letter which was hand-carried to Sacramento and was clearly a fraudulently prepared document that misrepresented the city’s position that the City of Ridgecrest “supports” AB 1413 and 1466.

‘It’s also become apparent that the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority not only sponsored the two bills, they paid Capitol Core to orchestrate the authorship and introduction of the bills in the state legislature. Public Records Act requests at the Groundwater Authority and the Kern County Counsel’s Office are pending.

Calls for a recall of Blades and Hayman by members of the community have been made, and it’s unknown whether or not the Kern County Grand Jury is investigating Blades and Hayman for violations of the Brown Act.

The city council’s next meeting is on Wednesday August 6th at 6:00 p.m.

Phase Two of the Comprehensive Adjudication Trial is Scheduled to Begin on June 1st 2026

The comprehensive adjudication of the Indian Wells Valley basin 06-054 became necessary after Mojave Pistachios filed a lawsuit challenging the Groundwater Sustainability Plan that was prepared by Groundwater Authority beginning in 2017. The final Groundwater Sustainability Plan was adopted in January of 2020, and since then, millions have been spent on engineering,

The Indian Wells Valley Water District was then forced to file a cross complaint for a comprehensive adjudication of the entire basin in order to defend their ratepayers as well as the water rights of property owners in their district.

At issue in Phase Two? The science of hydrogeology. Below is a comparison of the Groundwater Authority’s estimates for the key data points used to formulate the GSP.

Indian Wells Valley Technical Working Group (Information Provided by the IWV Water District)

A Technical Working Group (TWG) composed of qualified groundwater professionals designated by parties representing more than 80 percent of the total groundwater production from the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin (Basin) was formed to assess groundwater storage in the Basin and evaluate other related technical questions. This paper was the subject of collaboration between these professionals applying scientific methods to estimate the total amount of groundwater and usable groundwater in storage in the Basin.

This effort required defining the physical parameters of the Basin, including its geologic and hydrologic characteristics. Three separate methodologies were considered, and the average groundwater volumes estimated from those three approaches are as follows:

1. The total volume of groundwater in storage in the Basin is approximately 66.9 million acre-feet; and
2. The amount of fresh groundwater in storage in the Basin is approximately 37.5 million acre-feet

(Publisher’s Note: This is well over the entire storage capacity of Lake Mead on the Colorado River, which is approximately 33 million acre-feet.)

It is difficult to ignore the significant differences between the current values presently being used in the GSP and the estimates developed by the TWG. The values are as follows:

Why are the TWG estimates significantly different from the GSP estimates?

Using renowned experts in hydrology, engineering and geology, the TWG estimates were determined using a comprehensive analysis of the most complete, up-to-date data sets available and state of the art analytical methodology. Previous studies that pre-date the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act were never focused on, or intended to, determine the specific requirement of the new law. These studies sometimes analyzed only smaller portions of the valley, did not include some potential sources of recharge, and were limited by the technology available at the time. The study performed by the Technical Working Group specifically addressed all potential sources of recharge and the entire basin storage.

Background – Stetson Engineers have some explaining to do

The GSP was met with controversy as soon as it was announced. Stetson Engineers was declared the “water manager” at the Groundwater Authority, and the science of hydrogeology became an immediate concern.

The groundwater model produced by an organization of professors and students at various universities called Desert Research Institute was questionable and opaque. Questions surrounding the model, which included insufficient well monitoring data, insufficient measurements of flow rates of underground aquifers and aerial surveys meant to identify how much water was underground while surveys did not include the Navy base for security reasons.

The Indian Wells Valley was declared to be in “Critical Overdraft”. Pistachio farmers in Inyokern were targeted as the cause, and Searles Valley Minerals in Trona was forced, along with everyone else except “de minimus” well owners, to pay a “replenishment fee” to the Groundwater Authority so that the GA could buy water from the San Joaquin Valley.

The San Joaquin Table “A” water would be purchased from the State Water Project, with a reliability factor of less than 50%, and it would be imported via an existing pipeline called AVEK (Antelope Valley East Kern). The existing AVEK pipeline would be extended over 50 miles from California City where it currently ends, to the Indian Wells Valley, where it would then be connected to the Indian Wells Valley Water Districts distribution system. This is a problem in and of itself, requiring testing, monitoring and perhaps processing of the water as it enters the IWV Water District’s system.

The City of Ridgecrest and the Groundwater Authority Are the Losers

Not only is SGMA a failed experiment, but the law is also a scam, a grift, and a license for “Stakeholders” to commit fraud. And Senator Hurtado is absolutely correct; SGMA has created many winners and many more losers.

California voters approved a $7.5 billion bill to build dams and reservoirs in 2014, the same year SGMA was signed into law by former Governor Jerry Brown. Today, Governor Gavin Newsom has done nothing to alleviate California’s water management crisis, and only recently did he begin talking about water retention projects after the fires burned thousands of homes in Pacific Palisades and Malibu in Southern California.

Eleven years later, SGMA is bogged down by lawsuits, California’s massive bureaucracy and environmental lobbyists demanding the destruction of dams on the Klamath River. The state continues its fruitless efforts to “save the Smelt” by flushing billions of gallons of Sierra runoff into the Pacific Ocean, and the Sites reservoir project is only recently getting some funding after years of delays. Of course, the Sierra Club opposes the project, calling it an “Archiac ‘solution’ to Water”:

PROPOSED Statement of Decision For Phase One Trial Involving the United States Navy’s Federal Reserve Water Right

IWV Water District board member Stan Rajtora said “this is an excellent, well written decision by Judge Claster.” The next meeting of the water district will be held on Monday, August 11th at 6:00 p.m.

The first three pages of the 36-page Proposed Statement of Decision provide an executive summary of the Phase 1 trial. The full document is provided below.

The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Sustainability Plan (January 2020)

Letter From Navy Dated June 17, 2019: Historic Water Consumption at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake

Ridgecrest City Manager Ron Strand Has Gone Off the Reservation

The ill-conceived Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) failed its first test in a court of law last week. The plan, which was formulated beginning in 2018 and finalized by January 2020, was the brainchild of former Kern County Supervisor Mick Gleason and Kern County Attorney Phill Hall, who appears to be off the case indefinitely.

To date, the Indian Wells Valley Water District has collected and remitted to the Groundwater Authority exactly $14,521,177 in replenishment fees. The Groundwater Authority hasn’t provided an audited financial statement for 3 years, though one is coming soon.

City Manager Ron Strand was highly critical of the Judge Claster’s decision, threatened to appeal (on the City’s Facebook page), and blamed the water district for not supporting the notion that the Navy would require more personnel and more water in the future. This was in spite of the fact that the Navy testified that it needed only 2,041 acre-feet of water per year.

“This ruling threatens the very foundation of water affordability in Ridgecrest and the ability for our community to grow and prosper.” says Strand, who’s well known in the community as an authoritarian bureaucrat who manipulates and deceives in ways only a regular council-watcher would know. The only thing making water unaffordable is the Groundwater Authority’s replenishment fee, and that doesn’t include the cost of the $400 million AVEK pipeline.

The Indian Wells Valley Water District would be well advised to withhold the replenishment fees they collect for the Groundwater Authority and place the funds in an escrow account instead.

Navy’s Water Right Reduced – Ridgecrest at Risk

by City Manager Ron Strand (Via Facebook on the City’s Facebook page)

This week, a courtroom in distant Orange County issued one of the most consequential rulings for the Indian Wells Valley in decades. On July 29, 2025, the court preliminarily determined that the Navy’s Federal Reserve Right to groundwater is 2,008 acre-feet per year (AFY)—far less than the 6,783 AFY the Navy claimed it needed for its future mission. 

This ruling threatens the very foundation of water affordability in Ridgecrest and the ability for our community to grow and prosper.

For years, the Indian Wells Valley Water District (Water District) relied on 4,390 AFY of replenishment-free water transferred from the Navy’s unused water right to serve its off-base civilian workforce. In 2024, the Water District pumped 74% of its total use in replenishment-free unused water. This exemption saved the Water District—and its ratepayers—millions of dollars annually.  

Now, with the court’s preliminary ruling in favor of a sharply-reduced Federal Reserve Right for the Navy, that replenishment-free water supply is at risk. Unless overturned, the Water District could be forced to purchase water, that it once pumped for free, from local big agricultural interests —forcing Ridgecrest residents and businesses to pay significantly higher water rates. 

This situation arose because the Water District chose to file a comprehensive adjudication when it could have simply filed a lawsuit directly against the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority in challenge of the Groundwater Sustainability Plan. A more narrow legal challenge would have allowed the Water District to contest the plan, without opening the door to a full adjudication trial—a process that ultimately placed the Navy’s Federal Reserve Right under legal scrutiny.

What’s worse is that the Water District has so far failed to publicly support the Navy in this legal fight—even though it stood to lose the most. It is now time for the Water District to reverse course and argue against this preliminary decision and support an appeal if it becomes final —for the benefit of its ratepayers and our community’s largest employer – the NAVY.

Publisher’s Note: Ron Strand can’t retire soon enough. If he doesn’t, replace him as soon as possible and give him a watch.

Has The Sierra Club Ever Thought to Study Why 15 of the 20 largest fires ever recorded in the State of California occurred in just the last 15 years? Drought is a cyclical event that has occurred for thousands of years. And how much CO2 was released into the atmosphere as a result of these fires?

Has the IWV Groundwater Authority been engaged in a Conspiracy to Commit Fraud??