“Ignorant” Democrats in Sacramento Passed SGMA in 2014 – former Governor Jerry Brown

September 2, 2026

Ridgecrest California

Timestamped to begin at 58:53

“All wealth flows from the land.”

Think about that statement for a moment. All wealth flows from the land, from food, to oil and gas, to minerals and finally, to groundwater. All of it comes from the land.

That’s the first and most important principle taught in real estate school. The attorneys would be hard pressed to argue with the real estate agents on this most important legal construct and the right to own property in a free, Constitutional Republic.

They all know that Fee simple ownership of property is the highest and most complete form of property ownership recognized in U.S. and common‑law systems. Owners have full possession, control, and the ability to transfer the property without restrictions, aside from legal limitations such as zoning or taxation.

The Takings Clause, found in the Fifth Amendment, states: “Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” It limits the government’s power to seize private property for public purposes unless it pays fair market value to the owner.

California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act is a horrible law, and it’s a “taking”. The Fifth Amendment’s core purpose is to prevent the government from forcing isolated individuals to bear public burdens that should be shared by the public as a whole.

How many small farmers in the San Joaquin Valley have been forced to sell their farms to big corporate agricultural interests or perhaps to companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party? What about Searles Valley Minerals? Was SGMA the last straw and a factor that forced them into bankruptcy? You bet it was.

As for the “groundwater authority”, SGMA is a band aid over the festering sore of California’s mismanagement of the state’s vast and plentiful water resources as well a capitulation to the radical environmental lobby in California.

The Navy made things worse. See the Post below titled “SNAFU: The Navy at China Lake Blows It on Groundwater” on Roadrunner395.com for more details.

“Ignorant” Sacramento Democrats Passed SGMA in 2014 – former Governor Jerry Brown

SGMA was passed and signed by Governor Jerry Brown in 2014. At the 10-year anniversary of SGMA during a conference in Sacramento in November of 2024, former Governor Jerry Brown said the bill’s sponsors relied on three things to get the law passed. Number one, the state was in a severe drought, Number two, the state legislature was dominated by Democrats, and Number three, the state’s legislators were largely “ignorant” of such things as groundwater rights (and private property rights).

Brown also proclaimed that SGMA was “democracy in action” because it created 164 Sustainable Groundwater Agencies that were “locally controlled”. The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority is a monstrosity. The “Authority” isn’t locally controlled, virtually nobody involved with the GA is from the Indian Wells Valley, and it’s certainly not democratic.

The five directors of the groundwater agency are appointed, not elected, One director is a staff member of a San Bernardino County supervisor. Inyo County sent an attorney to sit on the board, and Kern County is represented by Supervisor Philip Peters of Bakersfield.

The Groundwater Authority has no staff.

The GA does have nearly 15 corporations performing various roles such as engineering, management, public relations, lobbying, as well as a plethora of corporate attorneys working out of Keith Lemieux’s law firm which is somewhere in Southern California. None of them are the GA’s “staff”, and Keith Lemieux certainly can’t tell the members of the City Council what they can or can’t talk about as he did last year by improperly invoking the argument of “attorney client privilege” in order to silence the council.

What should we call the merger of the state’s law enforcement power and corporate power without any accountability to the people? I’ll leave that up for you to decide.

We now know that AB 1413 was sponsored by the IWV Groundwater Authority.

During a senate committee hearing on AB 1413 last year, Supervisor Philip Peters was publicly scolded by State Senator Shannon Grove. So that everyone could see it, Senator Grove dramatically held up a copy of the fraudulent letter which was ostensibly prepared by City Clerk Ricca Charlon and signed by Blades, while she proclaimed, “You’re on the wrong side of this issue my friend”.

During the committee hearing when Supervisor Peters was lambasted, State Senator Melissa Hurtado called SGMA a “failed experiment. It picks winners and losers”. It’s worse than that.

Kern County Supervisor David Couch was able to corner the city’s three representatives during an emergency meeting of the Kern County Board of Supervisors. He thoroughly embarrassed Strand, Blades and Hayman, and it was like pulling teeth getting them to admit that they never held any public or closed sessions in order to vote on AB 1413.

The purpose of AB 1413 was to avoid the Phase Two adjudication of “Safe Yield”. The GA was fearful of the truth coming out, and what did we learn? The GA has been lying to you for nearly seven years.

We are still awaiting a statement from the Kern County District Attorney’s office and whether or not there’s an ongoing investigation into this matter.

The Indian Wells Valley is not running out of water.

The IWV has 37,500,000 acre feet of potable groundwater in storage, not 1,500,000 acre feet as stated by Steve Johnson of Stetson Engineers who’s also the “water manager” and author of the valley’s Groundwater Sustainability Plan. Steve Johnson and Stetson Engineers should be fired.

The IWV is NOT in critical overdraft as defined by SGMA, and the project to import water from the State Water Project using a $400 Million pipeline is completely and absolutely unnecessary as well as unfundable.

There is more groundwater in the IWV basin than can be stored in Lake Mead, and if you added the 22 million acre feet of brackish water, you could fill both Lake Mead and Lake Powell and have millions of acre feet left over.

Former City Manager Ron Strand and Councilmember Scott Hayman would have you believe the Indian Wells Valley Water District is a threat to national security. How stupid do they think the people of Ridgecrest are?

Navy Region Southwest?

Perhaps NAWS employees will be able to convince their bosses down at Navy Region Southwest that the water district is the Navy’s best friend in the IWV. The Navy will get whatever water they need to fulfill their mission, and it will be clean and provided at the lowest possible cost to Navy’s employees.

The Navy wants redundancy in their water supplies. Ask yourselves, where does the Navy get the fresh water to serve the personnel on their aircraft carriers and battleships?

What Ridgecrest and the Navy need is a dual use wastewater treatment facility that can process brackish water and wastewater. That’s right, the Navy needs to build a desal plant to go along with the wastewater treatment plant. A dual use treatment facility would seem to make sense, but the notion of any common sense seems to have been lost in Ridgecrest. My hope is that common sense prevails at China Lake and the Navy.