April 1st, 2026

We have received a comprehensive response from the Kern County Counsel’s office and our Public Records Act request concerning the legislation AB 1413 and AB 1466.

Timestamped to begin at public comment:

The actions of Councilman Kyle Blades, the City of Ridgecrest, the IWV Groundwater Authority and Capitol Core leading up to the introduction of the legislation were part of a “legal strategy” and done in secret with no public disclosures or comments.

The Post below was written after news that Councilman Blades’ gave testimony to a committee hearing in Sacramento that was first discovered by Scott O’Neil. It then became known to the citizens of Ridgecrest after he wrote a letter to the Daily Independent:

In short, Councilman Kyle Blades, along with Councilman Scott Hayman and City Manager Ron Strand, took actions to support AB 1413 on behalf of the City of Ridgecrest with no authority to do so. The letter prepared by City Clerk Ricca Charlon was a gross and erroneous misrepresentation of the city’s position on AB 1413. The city had taken no position and apparently never discussed the legislation in either open or closed sessions. Councilman Blades gave false testimony to the Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife on April 8th, 2025.

The documents below will show that the legislation was written and proposed to legislators by the IWV Groundwater Authority and Capitol Core after consultations with Paul Gosselin at DWR as well as the office of Governor Gavin Newsom. Over eight legislators were contacted by Capitol Core and all of them rejected becoming a sponsor to the legislation before Assemblymember Diane Papan agreed to do so.

There’s much more information to be gleaned from these documents and they’ll be the topic of a future post or two.

AB 1413 establishes that the Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP), once approved by a Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) and the Department of Water Resources (DWR), is the controlling legal authority that determines the “Safe Yield” of the groundwater basin and that the Safe Yield cannot be challenged in a comprehensive adjudication action by a judge in the Superior Court of the State of California.

This bill recognizes that some parties in adjudication are seeking to re-litigate the sustainable
yield determinations in comprehensive adjudications. By forcing courts to reconsider valid,
scientific, determinations by regulatory agencies, the existing process is adding time and expense
to groundwater adjudications, and substituting valid scientific determinations with that of a
judge. Seeking to avoid duplicative legal proceedings, this measure would prohibit a judge in a
groundwater adjudication from adopting a sustainable yield that is in excess of the sustainable
yield established in a validated GSP.