1. The State Water Board Is Moving Toward an Interim Plan for the Tulare Lake Basin — With Higher Fees Attached On September 4, State Board senior management formally notified the basin GSAs of their timeline for a Tulare Lake interim plan: a draft is expected by late summer/fall 2027, with adoption hearings at the end of 2027. This matters because once an interim plan is adopted, the state-imposed pumping fee jumps from $20 per acre-foot to $35 per acre-foot. For South Fork Kings, which pumps roughly 80,000–90,000 acre-feet annually, that could translate to approximately $1.8 million per year in state fees alone. The revised GSP is still on track for submission in March/April 2027, and the State Board indicated it will review the GSP in parallel with its own interim plan work.
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