UPDATE October 2nd, 2025

There were lots of fireworks at last night’s city council meeting. Illegal Fireworks and aggressive police actions to catch and issue citations to people launching aerial fireworks was on the agenda. Fireworks were also launched by Councilman Kyle Blades bad mouthing anyone who disagrees with him, and who should be a defendant in a Brown Act trial, demanding that the city try to take a seat on the Ridgecrest Regional Hospital board of directors.

California’s health care system has been critically overburdened by illegal aliens on Medi-Cal, and Governor Newsom has been forced to scale back free health care to illegals due to a $12 billion budget deficit.

California Closes $12 Billion Budget Deficit With Hit to Migrants

There’s a possibility the hospital will be forced to become part of an eastern Kern hospital district and as a result, this very complex issue will likely give residents of Ridgecrest, especially retirees living on fixed incomes who rely on Medicare, another good reason to sell their real estate in the IWV and leave the state.

October 1, 2025 (Originally posted)

Ridgecrest California

The good news keeps rolling in. Kern County Supervisor Phillip Peters is predicting the death of SGMA. We think he’s wrong about a lot of things but hope that his prediction comes true.

Let’s clear the air:

Sacramento legislators didn’t consider the economic damage that would be caused by SGMA when they wrote the law. California’s Water and Energy policies have produced grave implications for the state’s future economic prospects.

The Groundwater Sustainability Plan for the Indian Wells Valley is seriously flawed and the “science” behind the plan is at the very least, highly questionable. I like to use the word “rigged”.

I don’t have any skin in the game, and I’m not a hydrogeologist, but in my opinion, after spending thousands of hours on the topic of water in the IWV, the GSP is seriously flawed, and the GA’s science was rigged. And despite objections from the pumpers and the public, DWR shouldn’t have approved the GSP in the first place.

The cost of living due to the highest energy prices in the country is only one example of the many failures of Sacramento’s politicians, and today the failure of the Department of Water Resources to manage California’s abundant water resources and failure to implement the flawed law of SGMA will cause over a million acres of irrigated farmland in the San Joaquin Valley to be fallowed, along with 85,000 jobs lost and over $7 billion per year in economic costs.

SGMA to dry up one-fifth of irrigated San Joaquin Valley farmland

The cost of fallowing upwards of one million acres of farmland across California will be measured in the billions of dollars to the state’s economy as an estimated 85,000 jobs are lost and farm income declines by more than $7 billion annually, according to a university report.

Don’t be fooled into thinking the state is fallowing the farmland for any other reason but to make way for a million acres of solar panels and saving water so they can cool AI data centers in Silicon Valley. SGMA is a scam, NetZero and Climate Change are scams and Californians are fools to believe otherwise.

The Indian Wells Valley is fortunate to have an abundant supply of groundwater, with minimal economic damages that might result from over-pumping. There’s no subsidence, and private wells that might run dry are both shallow and very old and beyond their lifespans. There are many ways to mitigate the damage caused by over pumping. In addition, the valley’s net pumping over recharge is a “drop in the bucket” if the technical working group’s science is correct.

And that’s why the issue of the science needs to be addressed by the judge now, either in a court of law or through mediation or as a reverse validation action. We won’t have to wait 10 years or longer to find out. We’ll know next year.

Supervisor Peters is wrong to claim that it could take 10 or 15 years to settle the issue in the courts. In fact, wouldn’t it be a bold action for the IWV and the GA to turn their backs on the Department of Water Resources and tell them that you don’t need SGMA or San Joaquin Valley water to sustain the valley? SGMA as written is already dead, and AB 1413 just makes it more dead. The IWV can do just fine without AB 1413 and SGMA.

The IWV has all the water it needs, and you don’t need Sacramento politicians or the radical environmental lobby controlling your groundwater. Thus far, settlements will be reached with the farmers, and they should be made whole, and Searles Valley Minerals will get the water they have every right to use. The Indian Wells Valley Water District and the Navy have reduced water consumption through conservation and will do more to achieve “sustainability” with recycling.

The only thing that’s dead is the Indian Wells Valley’s Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) and the AVEK pipeline project. Well, maybe not dead, but the GSP is certainly in serious condition and on life-support and it needs to be revised and redeveloped the right way with the right science.

My guess is that Supervisor Peters has fallen off his rocker and hit his head, and I’ll predict that SGMA won’t be repealed but may be replaced by new legislation that doesn’t pick winners and losers, while refocusing on water resource management and projects intended when voters passed Proposition 1 in 2014.

Last thoughts on Supervisor Peters and his “death of SGMA” prediction:

• This must be the new narrative from the GA on AB 1413. Supervisor Peters probably didn’t know about the Reverse Validation Action filed by the water district when he spoke to SJV Water. See above for the article.

• Perhaps DWR shouldn’t have approved a clearly flawed and rigged GSP in the first place?

• Let’s compare the economic damage to lost jobs, fallowing etc.etc. to the real cost of “undesirable results” such as subsidence and some old, shallow wells running dry, shall we?

Whatever happened to the $7.5 billion voters approved in 2014 for water infrastructure and better management of the abundant resources California has in the first place?

Have no Prop. 1 water projects been built in California? No, but they are moving slowly (LA Times)