About 30 ranchers and residents sat quietly in the Cuyama Valley Family Resource Center recently, hanging on every word from Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Highberger as he succinctly laid out the history, the status and the substantial stakes of an ongoing groundwater adjudication started by mega carrot farming companies Grimmway Farms and Bolthouse Farms in 2022. … Highberger has already determined the safe yield for the Cuyama basin, which is the amount that can be pumped without causing problems such as land sinking or groundwater levels continuing to drop. … Current pumping is between 42,000 and 44,000 acre feet per year, or more than double what can be extracted without putting the basin into overdraft. Highberger must now determine which pumpers will be allotted how much of that 20,370-acre-foot pie.

Other groundwater news:

• SJV Water (Bakersfield, Calif.): Lots of comments at Kings pumping policy events – just not about the pumping policies