Introduction: Water as Profit vs Water as Survival

It is a cool January morning in Lost Hills, Kern County. The drive there is lined with dull, leafless trees resting through the winter. The dormant orchards look almost like a forest of sticks. When spring comes, they will need enough water to survive, and when the California summer arrives, they will need even more water to endure the heat. In Lost Hills, the vibrant green turf of Wonderful Park stands out from the dull vegetation around it, like an oasis against a bleak landscape. The park feels almost unnaturally placed. With its green turf field and manicured grounds, it radiates the image of a perfect spring. Again, you think of how much water must be poured into maintaining that image. But nearby, water has a more personal meaning for locals like Lupe and her husband, Manuel, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico and now live in a trailer home in Lost Hills with their three children: one son and two daughters. As Lupe prepares dinner, she lets the kitchen tap run, waiting for the yellow, foul-smelling water that her daughter says “comes out like pee” to clear. She does this because she does not trust that the water is safe, even though monthly tests show compliance with state and federal standards.[1]

The demand conflict is evident; there is a demand for water to support the surrounding agricultural production but there is also a need for household water security. This tension is the starting point of this paper, but the deeper question is about who controls the water, who benefits from it and who is left to manage the risks. After understanding the demand for water, we can look at the supply. California is drought-prone with three out of every ten years being dry or drought years.[2] This drought risk necessitated the need for water banks as a system to store water during wet seasons and supply it during dry seasons. Of the many water banks in California, this paper will focus on the Kern Water Bank and how it prioritizes who gets water and who does not.

One of California’s largest and most controversial water reserves is the Kern Water Bank.[3] The water system is an integral part of the state’s farming system as well as its environmental ecosystem, which was supposed to help the region’s water system. However, when the bank was transferred to a quasi-private entity, it became surrounded by controversy and debates. In a deal made in 1994, but hidden from the public’s eye, the privatized water bank system was born. One that gave more power to the Kern County than the respective public agencies in maintaining the water bank. This paper seeks to analyze the deal and frame it as an environmental justice issue between big agribusiness and the immigrant farmworkers. More specifically, the paper aims to understand how the rising agribusiness and its influence with the immigrant farmers has affected the distribution of the water resource after the privatization of the water bank. In this manner, the impact of the changes in resource distribution can be studied, especially as it relates to the locals receiving the water resources from the bank.

The existing writings on the Kern Water Bank explain it through the lens of history, law, policy, economics or environmental impact and compliance. These perspectives are important as they give a broader understanding of water infrastructure. They describe how water systems are shaped by political decisions, economic interests, and legal structures that can normalize coloniality and racial capitalism.[4] They also show how water governance often measures accountability through environmental reports and compliance standards.[5] [6] This paper uses these sources as a foundation but shifts the focus to environmental justice by highlighting some of the struggles from the lived experience of the residents. It asks how the privatization of the Kern Water Banks affected immigrant Latino families whose daily lives depend on safe household water. It highlights the fact that a project might have legal backing and environmental compliance but still create unequal human consequences. The paper argues that the central issue extends beyond the bank adhering to legal and environmental rules but investigates whether those rules protected the people with the least power in the water system.

To make this argument, the paper begins by viewing the Kern Water Bank in its original role as a public water reserve developed and maintained by taxpayer investments under government ownership. Then it introduces the 1994 Monterey Agreement as a defining point in the privatization of the bank, expanding the influence of large agribusinesses over its operation. From there it discusses how the involvement of large agrobusinesses created a conflict between water for profit and water for survival where the interests of local Latino farming communities were underrepresented. Finally, it examines how that shift shaped water quality, affordability and daily insecurities for Latino farming communities.

Kern County, Agriculture and a Water-Dependent Landscape

Kern County is located on the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley in Central California. It is the third largest county in California with an area of 8,132 square miles and occupied by 905,801 people as of 2018.[7] The area is surrounded by the Greenhorn Mountains and Sierra Nevada to the east, the Tehachapi and San Emigdio Mountains to the south, and the Temblor Range to the west. The Kern River flows nearby as the main natural water source but there are also a few minor streams in the area. Living up to its title as the “food basket of the world,” it relies on irrigation to support its agriculture which includes the growth of almonds, grapes, citrus, carrots, pistachios, hay and alfalfa, cherries, and cotton.[8] [9]

Kern County is a major-minority county with one of the highest poverty rates in California. The Latino community makes up majority of the population accounting for about 52 percent of the residents, followed by 36 percent white, 5 percent African Americans, 5 percent Asian, and the remaining 2 percent being other.[10] Almost a quarter of the population lives in poverty with the poverty rate among Latino, Black and Hawaiian/Pacific Islander households being over 30 percent. This points to the racial disparity in household income where the average income of a White household is $59,592 and that of a Black household is $30,926.8. That difference of about $30,000 makes it one of the highest racial disparities in median household income in the state.[11]

The socioeconomic data classify the people living in Kern County are also relatively vulnerable. The report states that 43% of residents have low income compared to the California average of 28% and the US average of 30%. It also mentions that 9% of residents live in limited English -speaking households with most of those households being Spanish speakers. This is important as language barriers make it harder for communities to access public information and contribute to political decision making. Additionally, it states that 69% of residents are people of color and 55% of them are Hispanic. This is higher than the state average and 3 times higher than the national average. It is another valuable point because historically, minorities have been marginalized and experienced environmental racism. Other vulnerabilities are the unemployment rate and the educational rate, which are both above national averages. This means that the environmental burdens in Kern County are occurring in a place where people can be racially marginalized, are economically vulnerable and in some cases, excluded from systems of power because of the language barrier.[12]

Kern County is one of the leading agricultural counties in California. According to the Kern Water Bank Authority’s Environmental Impact Report, fruit and nut crop acreage in Kern County more than doubled between 1995 and 2015, rising from 223,214 acres to 525,398 acres.[13] Similarly, Public Citizen’s Water Heist shows how Paramount Farming Company, now part of The Wonderful Company, doubled its cultivated acreage in Kern County from 41,000 acres in 1994 to nearly 81,000 acres by 2003, eventually owning more than five million trees in the region.[14] This demonstrates a trend in the growing of permanent crops which pose a significant economic risk if they do not get a constant supply of water.

This shows the increasing importance of water reliability in Kern County. As corporate farms shifted toward permanent crops like almonds, pistachios, citrus, and grapes, reliable water supply became necessary because these trees required year-round watering to sustain them. Unlike annual crops, permanent orchards cannot simply be abandoned during dry years without destroying years of financial commitment. This need for water for agriculture exists in a region shaped by California’s dry climate and recurring droughts. The problem is the need for dependable water in a place where surface supply varies in addition to supplying enough water to sustain the agriculture in the area.[15] In this context, the Kern Water Bank appeared to offer a solution. By storing water underground during wetter years and making it available during dry years, the bank promised to stabilize agricultural production and protect the region from the uncertainty of drought. However, because stored water becomes most valuable when water is scarce, the bank also raised a deeper question: who would control this reserve, and whose needs would that control serve?

The Kern Water Bank as a Public-Oriented Infrastructure

The Kern Water Bank’s early history shows that it was initially imagined as a public-oriented infrastructure project, supported by public planning and taxpayer investment. It is located west of Bakersfield on the Kern River Fan; a landscape suited for groundwater recharge due to the sandy soil present and its ability to absorb water easily.[16] Rather than storing water behind a dam, the bank works by spreading imported and local surface water across recharge ponds, allowing that water to seep underground into the aquifer. When water is needed during dry years, recovery wells pump the stored water back out for use. In this way, the bank turned the natural geology of Kern County into a form of public water infrastructure.

The Kern Water Bank is the world’s largest groundwater storage facility.[17] It covers more than 20,000 acres and stores water from the State Water Project, the Central Valley Project, and the Kern River. The recharge facilities include 75 shallow recharge basins, 88 recovery wells, 36 miles of pipelines, the six-mile KWB canal to the Kern River, and three pump stations. These facilities allow it to recharge between 40,000 and 60,000 acre-feet of water monthly with a maximum capacity of about 1 million acre-feet.[18] [19] Since 1995, approximately 2.5 million acre-feet of water has been diverted into the bank, making it one of the most significant groundwater banking projects in California.[20] These features made the bank valuable not only as a local agricultural resource, but also as part of California’s broader strategy for managing drought and unstable surface water supplies.

The bank itself was acquired by the California Department of Water Resources in 1988 after one of the worst droughts in California history leaves California with less than 40 percent of average historical runoff.[21] The initial cost was about $35 million and an estimated $74 million has been spent since then on development, management and studies.[22] At this point, the KWB was closely tied to the Department of Water Resources and the State Water Project and was devoted to public planning around drought, flood control, and water reliability. The State Water Project itself grew out of mid-twentieth-century state planning, including the Burns-Porter Act and the public financing of California’s water infrastructure.[23] In that context, the Kern Water Bank appeared to serve a public purpose: capturing water when it was available, storing it underground, and making the region more resilient when surface supplies became unreliable.

However, the same features that made the bank useful also made it politically valuable. If the bank could store water in wet years and release it in dry years, then control over the bank meant control over drought security. For this reason, the question was not only how the bank worked physically, but who governed it, who benefited from its storage, and whether its public purpose would survive once its ownership structure changed.

The Monterey Agreement and the Closed-Door Rewriting of Water Rules

The public-oriented purpose of the Kern Water Bank began to change with the 1994 Monterey Agreement. The agreement emerged after the longest drought in history at the time happened between 1987–1992. The Monterey Agreement was presented in response to the unreliability of State Water Project deliveries during the drought.[24] However, the controversy came from both the substance of the agreement and the process that produced it. Rather than being developed through a broad public debate over how California should distribute scarce water, the agreement was negotiated largely behind closed doors between state officials and powerful State Water Project contractors. The Monterey Agreement was executed on the 1^st of December 1994 after months of meeting in a resort in the Monterey Peninsula. This closed-door process matters because the communities most vulnerable to water insecurity were not positioned as equal participants in the decisions that would reshape the rules of water allocation. The Monterey Agreement was not just a policy change; it was a secretive activity that bypassed democratic process.

One of the most important changes involved Article 18 of the State Water Project contracts. Article 18 detailed how the KWB should react if it was unable to deliver all the water it promised and was a two-part rule. Article 18a was the rule of “Urban Preference” which prioritized residents in the event of short supply of water in the dry seasons. More specifically, it states that water for agriculture be cut first. Article 18b regulated “paper water” which were contracts promising to deliver water to the KWB. The Monterey Agreement made drastic changes to both parts of Article 18. It amended Article 18a to permit the KWB to deliver water to all contractors regardless of type of use. This removed the safeguards that residents previously enjoyed and could potentially reduce water supply to urban areas by 25 percent.[25] Article 18b was completely removed effectively deregulating “paper water” and giving the SWP contractors the ability to use their unregulated contracts as assets to take loans against for financial gain.[26]

Another modified point was Article 21 which governed “surplus” water. Initially, Article 21 was written to deter contractors from making a “permanent economy” of the stored water. This was to prevent them from making investments that depend on an unreliable supply of water. The Monterey Agreement removed this safeguard; thus, contractors were requesting maximum amounts of water from the bank during wet seasons. This not only meant that the KWB was not reaching its intended storage capacity, but it also meant that these contractors could buy the water at a cheaper price and some other changes to the rules, sell the same water back at higher prices.[27]

There were other points agreed on at the resort in the Monterey Peninsula, but the idea remains the same. This public facing operation of the Kern Water Bank was changed to a system where powerful water users can manage uncertainty through storage, markets, legal resources, and political influence, while poorer communities absorb the insecurity more directly. The issue is less about water availability and more that the rules governing scarcity were rewritten in a way that gave more flexibility to those already closest to power.

This highlights the point of structural exclusion. The Monterey Agreement did not need to openly target Latino farming communities to harm them. Instead, exclusion happened through the structure of the process itself. The negotiations were technical, legalistic, and dominated by institutions with the resources to participate. Low-income Latino residents, farmworker families, and disadvantaged communities were largely absent from the rooms where decisions about drought security were made. As a result, the agreement reflected the priorities of state water contractors and large agricultural interests more than the daily water needs of nearby communities. This was a failure of procedural justice: the people most vulnerable to the consequences of water scarcity had the least power in shaping the rules that governed it.

The Monterey Agreement changed the political meaning of the Kern Water Bank. A water reserve developed through public planning and taxpayer investment became tied to a new system of flexibility, transfer, and private advantage. That flexibility may have helped contractors manage risk, but it also made water easier to treat as an asset rather than a public safeguard. Once control over stored water became more valuable during drought, the question of who governed the Kern Water Bank became inseparable from the question of who would be protected from scarcity.

From Public Reserve to Quasi-Private Asset

The Monterey Agreement did not privatize the Kern Water Bank through a direct sale to one corporation. Instead, it moved the bank through a more complicated institutional structure that blurred the line between public authority and private benefit. Before the agreement, the bank had been acquired and developed with public resources as part of California’s broader water storage system.[28] After the Monterey process, however, control shifted away from the Department of Water Resources and toward local water agencies and contractors who had a stronger commercial interest in how the stored water would be used. This is why the Kern Water Bank is not called a fully private company, but a quasi-private asset: it remained connected to public agencies and water law, but its benefits increasingly flowed toward a smaller group of powerful water users.

The main institution that represented this shift was the Kern Water Bank Authority. The KWBA was organized as a Joint Powers Authority, which gave it a public-facing legal form. However, its membership and storage benefits were closely tied to agricultural water districts and private landholding interests. The transfer of power to the Joint Powers Authority governing the KWBA was a point of contention. The transfer of power was proposed in the form of a 2 stage transfer from state holding to the Kern County Water Authority to the KWBA which was made possible under the Monterey Agreement.[29] This structure made the bank appear administrative and technical, but in practice it gave the participating members control over one of California’s most valuable drought resources. The bank had slowly shifted away from a public facing utility to a tool monopolized by already powerful water contractors.

Fig. 1: Chart Showing Ownership of Kern Water Bank[30]

Fig. 1: Chart Showing Ownership of Kern Water Bank[30]

This structure also strengthened the role of large agribusiness. The Wonderful Company, owned by the Resnick family, became especially important. They have full ownership of Westside Mutual Water Company, one of the major participants in the Kern Water Bank Authority. Additionally, they own sizeable shares of Dudley Ridge and Wheeler Ridge thus giving them ownership of almost 60 percent of the KWB.[31] This matters because the bank’s value is not only in the land itself, but in the right to store and recover water during drought. In a region where permanent crops like almonds and pistachios require dependable irrigation, control over storage capacity becomes a form of economic protection. And the Resnick family is now in control of large farm land in the area and has the economic insurance in the form of water control.

This is the true effect of the Monterey Agreement. It weakened earlier shortage rules and expanded contractor flexibility also creating the conditions for a public water reserve to become a semi-commercial asset. In this new structure, water can be banked, recovered, transferred, and sold in ways that protected agribusiness from drought. Meanwhile, nearby Latino and farmworker communities do not receive comparable protection. They are not shareholders with storage accounts, legal teams, or deep wells. They remained dependent on household water systems that were more vulnerable to contamination, price increases, and scarcity. The result was a system where drought security is privatized, while drought risk remains public.

The Groundwater Race and the Engineering of Scarcity

The economic impact of the Kern Water Bank’s privatization became most visible through the groundwater race. After the Monterey Agreement expanded contractor flexibility and helped move the bank toward corporate influenced control, large agribusinesses gained more ways to protect themselves from drought. They could store water in wet years, recover it during dry years, participate in water markets, and rely on deeper wells when surface water became unreliable. These options turned drought into a manageable business risk for wealthy agricultural interests. For smaller farmers and nearby Latino communities, however, the same drought conditions created insecurity, higher costs, and dependence on water systems they did not control.

This system created a strong financial incentive for companies to secure as much water as possible. In Kern County, permanent crops like almonds, pistachios, citrus, and grapes require dependable irrigation because they cannot simply be abandoned during dry years without destroying years of investment. As a result, large agricultural businesses had economic reasons to bank water, hold water, buy water when it was cheap, and sell or recover it when it became more valuable. The bank’s new structure made this possible by allowing members to use stored water as a form of drought insurance and, in some cases, as a market asset. Instead of water functioning only as a public safeguard, it became part of a business strategy for protecting agricultural wealth.

The groundwater race intensified this inequality. Wealthy agribusinesses could respond to falling water supplies by drilling deeper wells and expanding their pumping capacity. This allowed them to keep permanent crops alive even when shallower wells became unreliable. But deeper wells do not only benefit the companies that drill them. When large users pump heavily from underground, they can contribute to falling water tables, making it harder for smaller users and households to reach water. In this way, the ability of rich businesses to dig deeper wells gave them an economic advantage while increasing the vulnerability of people who could not afford the same infrastructure. This disparity became a sort of infrastructure lock; rich businesses could dig their wells 77 to 81 feet deeper than individual family farmers making it almost impossible for the family farmers or homes to compete with them in well depth or to chase the water table which has receded up to 115 feet.[32] [33]

This shows that the scarcity became engineered rather than simply natural. Drought reduced the amount of water available, but the economic structure determined who could adapt to that shortage. A large agribusiness could use stored water, deeper wells, legal resources, and market access to survive drought. A smaller farmer or household could not compete in the same way. If their well failed, they faced expensive repairs, new drilling costs, dependence on bottled water, or reliance on outside water deliveries. The same falling water table that represented an operational challenge for agribusiness became a direct household crisis for poorer residents.

The Monterey Agreement made this economic imbalance more powerful because it changed the rules around water flexibility. Earlier public safeguards treated water shortage as a public management issue, but the new system made water easier to move, store, trade, and use as an asset. This meant that large water users could benefit from scarcity while weaker communities absorbed its costs. When water became scarce, its market value increased. Those who controlled storage capacity and wells could protect themselves or profit from the shortage, while those without control faced higher prices and reduced security.

This economic divide also shaped the lived experience of Latino farming communities. Many Latino residents worked in the agricultural economy that depended on secure irrigation, but they did not receive the same protection from the water system. They could live near orchards sustained by stored water and deep wells while their own household water remained unreliable, expensive, or unsafe.[34] Companies were incentivized by the ability to sell water and hold water during drought, while individual farmers and residents became more vulnerable as deeper agricultural wells affected shallower wells.

The groundwater race shows how privatization converted drought into an unequal economic system. For agribusiness, water scarcity could be managed through investment: deeper wells, storage accounts, market transactions, and legal access. For low-income Latino communities, scarcity appeared as rising costs, dry wells, unsafe water, and reduced control over daily life. The result was not only a shortage of water, but a shortage created and intensified by unequal access to money, infrastructure, and political power. These economic effects did not remain abstract. As water tables fell and water became more expensive, the burden moved into the homes of Latino farming communities, where scarcity appeared through contaminated water, higher household costs, and the daily stress of not knowing whether tap water was safe.

Drinking Water, Contamination and the Human Toll

The consequences of the groundwater race did not remain in contracts, wells, or water markets. They entered the daily lives of Latino farming communities through drinking water. While large agribusinesses could manage drought through storage rights, deeper wells, and water transfers, nearby residents faced scarcity at the household level. For them, the central question was not how to protect orchards or preserve land value, but whether the water coming from the tap was safe enough to drink, cook with, or give to children. This is where the Kern Water Bank’s privatization becomes an environmental justice issue rather than only a policy dispute.

Lupe’s family in Lost Hills shows this household-level reality. Even when monthly tests claimed compliance with state and federal standards, the family still waited for yellow, foul-smelling water to clear from the kitchen tap before using it. Her daughter’s description that the water “comes out like pee” captures the gap between official compliance and lived experience.[35] A water system can meet regulatory standards on paper and still fail to produce trust among the people who rely on it every day. Environmental justice is therefore not only about whether a system technically passes inspection; it is about whether communities experience that system as safe, reliable, and dignified.

Kern County’s broader drinking-water problems make this lived experience part of a larger pattern. The human toll appears most clearly in disadvantaged communities such as Lost Hills, Lamont, and Allensworth, where residents face contaminated or distrusted drinking water while living beside an agricultural economy protected by deeper wells and stored water. The contaminants most often associated with this burden include arsenic, nitrates, and 1,2,3-TCP.[36] These pollutants turn water insecurity into a health issue because residents are not only worried about water quantity, but also about whether the water available to them is safe. In this way, scarcity is measured not only by whether water reaches the tap, but by whether families can trust that water once it arrives.

This produces a “triple penalty” for residents. First, they face health risks from contaminated or distrusted water. Second, they continue paying utility bills for tap water they may not feel safe using. Third, they must pay again for bottled water, filters, or replacement water. For wealthier households, buying bottled water may be an inconvenience. For low-income families, it becomes a regular economic burden that competes with food, rent, transportation, and medical costs. The cost of water insecurity is therefore not only environmental; it is also financial.

The psychological burden is harder to measure, but it is central to the human toll. Water is part of every routine: cooking, bathing, cleaning, drinking, making baby formula, and caring for children. When families cannot trust tap water, they must constantly make decisions about risk. They must decide whether to let the water run, whether to buy bottled water, whether to ration clean water, and whether a strange smell or color means danger. This daily uncertainty turns water insecurity into a form of stress. It also damages trust in public systems because residents are told that water may be compliant while their own senses tell them something is wrong.

This burden falls especially hard on Latino farmworker communities because they are tied to the agricultural economy but excluded from its water security. Many residents work in or around farms that depend on secure irrigation, yet they do not have storage accounts, legal teams, deep wells, or control over water markets. The contrast is sharp: orchards and fields can remain green through stored water and deep pumping, while workers’ communities struggle with unsafe or unaffordable household water. The Monterey Agreement and the Kern Water Bank’s quasi-private structure therefore did not simply change ownership or water contracts. They helped create a system where drought security became concentrated among powerful agricultural users, while drought risk moved into the homes of poorer Latino communities.

Conclusion

The story of the Kern Water Bank begins with a contrast. In Lost Hills, green fields and maintained parks sit near homes where families still worry about the color, smell, and safety of their tap water. That contrast is not accidental. It was shaped by public investment, drought, agricultural expansion, and a set of political decisions that changed who controlled stored water in Kern County.

This paper has argued that the 1994 Monterey Agreement helped turn the Kern Water Bank from a public drought reserve into a sort of business asset. By changing shortage rules, weakening limits on “paper water,” and helping move control toward water contractors and large agribusinesses, the agreement gave powerful growers more ways to protect themselves from drought. At the same time, nearby Latino farming communities did not receive the same protection. They were left with higher costs, weaker political power, unreliable wells, and drinking water they often could not fully trust.

The problem is not that groundwater banking itself is bad. Storing water underground can be useful in a dry state like California. The issue is who benefits from that storage. In Kern County, the benefits of water security have been concentrated among those with land, money, legal access, and deep wells, while many poorer residents experience scarcity at the household level. For them, water policy is not abstract. It shows up in the kitchen, in monthly bills, in bottled water purchases, and in the stress of deciding whether tap water is safe.

The Kern Water Bank exemplifies how environmental injustice can happen through contracts and infrastructure, not only through pollution. A public water system can follow legal procedures and still leave vulnerable communities behind. If California is going to rely on water banks as part of its future, then those systems must be judged not only by how much water they store, but by whether they protect the people who need water security most.

Endnotes

[1] Mark Arax, “A Kingdom from Dust,” The California Sunday Magazine, January 31, 2018, https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-dust.

[2] “The Monterey Plus Amendments to State Contracts: ‘Paper Water’ and the Kern Water Bank Giveaway: A C-WIN Policy Brief,” California Water Impact Network, January 2012, 2, https://cawaterlibrary.net/document/the-monterey-plus-amendments-to-state-contracts-paper-water-and-the-kern-water-bank-giveaway-a-c-win-policy-brief/.

[3] John Gibler, Water Heist: How Corporations Are Cashing in on California’s Water (Public Citizen, 2003), 8.

[4] Vivian Underhill et al., “The Coloniality of Modern Water: Global Groundwater Extraction in California, Palestine and Peru,” Water Alternatives 16, no. 1 (n.d.): 14.

[5] Monterey Amendment to the State Water Project Contracts (Including Kern Water Bank Transfer) and Associated Actions as Part of a Settlement Agreement (Monterey Plus), Final Environmental Impact Report no. 2003011118 (PBS&J, 2010), 778. This is an example of a final draft of the environmental impact report created for the state of California.

[6] Delores Brown, “Re: Comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the ‘Monterey Amendment to the State Water Project Contracts (Including Kern Water Bank Transfer) and Associated Actions as Part of a Settlement Agreement) (Monterey Plus),’” personal communication, January 14, 2008. This is a letter giving comments on an earlier draft of the Environmental Impact Report discussing compliance of the report with legal standards.

[7] Anisha Hingorani et al., Creating an Equitable Infill Development Framework for Kern County: Analysis and Community Recommendations to Support the 2019 General Plan Update, Policy Brief, Equity In Community Investments (Advancement Project California, Catalyst California, 2019), 2, https://www.catalystcalifornia.org/campaign-tools/publications/creating-an-equitable-infill-development-framework-for-kern-county.

[8] Advancement Project California, Kern County’s Future in the Face of Climate Change, Policy Brief, Equity In Community Investments (Advancement Project California, Catalyst California, 2019), iv, https://www.catalystcalifornia.org/campaign-tools/publications/kern-countys-future-in-the-face-of-climate-change.

[9] ICF, Kern Water Bank Authority Conservation and Storage Project Environmental Impact Report, Environmental Impact Report SCH #2012021041 (Kern Water Bank Authority, 2018), sec. 2.1.2.1.

[10] Advancement Project California, Kern County’s Future in the Face of Climate Change | Catalyst California, iv.

[11] Hingorani et al., Creating an Equitable Infill Development Framework for Kern County | Catalyst California, 2.

[12] Public Environmental Data Partners and EDGI, EJSCREEN: Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, v. 2.3, Public Environmental Data Partners, n.d., accessed April 15, 2026, https://pedp-ejscreen.azurewebsites.net/.

[13] ICF, Kern Water Bank Authority Conservation and Storage Project Environmental Impact Report, sec. 5.2.3.

[14] Gibler, Water Heist: How Corporations Are Cashing in on California’s Water, 10.

[15] ICF, Kern Water Bank Authority Conservation and Storage Project Environmental Impact Report, 3.3-9. The section on the Kern River discusses the variable movement of the river and how it is prone to flooding and receding during droughts.

[16] The Center for Biological Diversity, “Chronology of the State Water Project, Its Monterey Contract Amendments and the Kern Water Bank (1929-2010),” The Center for Biological Diversity, n.d., 1, accessed May 15, 2026, https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/monterey_plus_amendments/pdfs/Monterey%20Plus%20Amendments%20Chronology.pdf.

[17] Central Delta Water Agency v. California Department of Water Resources, No. 35-2010-80000561 (Superior Court of the State of California June 4, 2010), ¶ 122.

[18] Michael Kiparsky et al., “Groundwater Recharge for a Regional Water Bank: Kern Water Bank, Kern County, California,” Case Studies in the Environment (Berkeley, United States) 5, no. 1 (2021): 5, https://doi.org/10.1525/cse.2021.1223400. Mentions the KWB facilities.

[19] John Gibler, “In the San Joaquin Valley, Nothing Is More Valuable than Water (Part 1),” Inside Climate News, December 26, 2010, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26122010/san-joaquin-valley-nothing-more-valuable-water-part-1/. Mentions the KWB capacity

[20] Kiparsky et al., “Groundwater Recharge for a Regional Water Bank,” 1.

[21] The Center for Biological Diversity, “Monterey Plus Amended Chronology,” 1.

[22] Kiparsky et al., “Groundwater Recharge for a Regional Water Bank,” 2.

[23] First Amended Petition for Writ of Mandate and Compliant for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, ¶ 65.

[24] California Water Impact Network, “The Monterey Amendments to State Water Project Contracts: A History,” California Water Impact Network, n.d., 1, accessed May 15, 2026, https://cawaterlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/monterey-amendments-a-history-carolee-2-28-10.pdf.

[25] California Water Impact Network, “The Monterey Amendments to State Water Project Contracts: A History,” 2.

[26] “The Monterey Agreement : Statement of Principles by the State Water Contractors and the State of California, Department of Water Resources for Potential Amendments to the State Water Supply Contracts.,” n.d., accessed March 11, 2026, https://www.c-win.org/the-monterey-amendments.

[27] California Water Impact Network, “The Monterey Amendments to State Water Project Contracts: A History,” 3.

[28] Kiparsky et al., “Groundwater Recharge for a Regional Water Bank,” 2.

[29] First Amended Petition for Writ of Mandate and Compliant for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, ¶ 3.

[30] Kiparsky et al., “Groundwater Recharge for a Regional Water Bank,” 7.

[31] Kiparsky et al., “Groundwater Recharge for a Regional Water Bank,” 8.

[32] Jenny Marie Linder Rempel, “The Human Right to Water in California: Water Policy, Access, and Quality” (Dissertation, UC Berkeley, 2025), 38, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3b70t7ht. This gives a detailed breakdown on the well digging patterns.

[33] Deborah A. Sivas et al., “California Water Governance for the 21st Century,” Stanford Law School Environment & Natural Resources Law and Policy Program Report, 2017, 18. This talks about the local water table movement due to several factors including well digging and KWB recovery.

[34] Arax, “A Kingdom from Dust.”

[35] Arax, “A Kingdom from Dust.”

[36] Melissa Montalvo, “An Entire California Town Is without Running Water — in a Heat Wave,” California Divide, CalMatters, June 28, 2021, https://calmatters.org/california-divide/2021/06/california-water-drought-shortage-crisis-well-failure-teviston/.

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