In the southeastern corner of Kern County, California, where farmworker families depend on private wells for drinking water, decades of agricultural groundwater pumping have left the aquifer depleted and increasingly contaminated. A $3.25 million federal grant is now funding a new surface water pipeline designed to change that.
The Arvin-Edison Water Storage District, which manages irrigation water across roughly 132,000 acres of some of the nation's most productive farmland, is building a surface water conveyance pipeline to reduce how much it draws from the ground. When agricultural operations pump less groundwater, more remains available for the surrounding communities whose wells tap the same aquifer, and the water quality improves as contaminants like arsenic and nitrates become less concentrated.
The need is acute. The Kern County groundwater basin is designated "critically overdrafted" under California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, the 2014 law that for the first time required the state's most depleted basins to stop mining their aquifers. NASA satellite data captured the consequences in stark terms: parts of the San Joaquin Valley were sinking more than a foot per year during the 2012-2016 drought as farmers pumped groundwater at unsustainable rates after surface water allocations were cut to zero. Hundreds of domestic wells went dry during that drought, leaving families in communities like the city of Arvin without water.
Arvin is roughly 96% Latino, with a poverty rate above 30% and a median household income well below state and national averages. Many neighboring unincorporated communities lack formal water infrastructure entirely and rely on the same overtaxed aquifer. Similar stories of contaminated and failing wells have played out across the region, mirroring struggles seen in other rural communities like those in Floyd County, Kentucky and Vernon, New York.
The grant flows through the EPA and was included as a congressionally directed spending item in the FY2024 Consolidated Appropriations Act. The EPA approved a full cost-share waiver for the project, meaning Arvin-Edison owes no local match. Such waivers are typically granted when projects serve disadvantaged communities, consistent with federal environmental justice priorities.
Arvin-Edison has historically practiced conjunctive use, storing surface water underground in wet years and pumping it back when needed. But surface water deliveries from federal and state water projects have grown less reliable as drought, environmental regulations, and climate change squeeze supplies. The pipeline is designed to make surface water easier to move and use when it is available, so the district can pump less from the ground.
Construction, site preparation, and post-construction EPA review are all covered under the grant. California's groundwater sustainability law requires the Kern basin to reach sustainable levels by 2040, giving the district roughly 15 years to close the gap between how much water goes in and how much comes out.
