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CALIFORNIA / KINGS COUNTY

Kettleman City

At risk
Kettleman City, California
Ken Lund, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Population (2020)
1,242
Announced
October 2021
Cause
allocation
Where
36.01°N, 119.96°W

What happened, and when

Every dated water event the register holds for Kettleman City, newest first, each with the sources that document it.

  1. At riskon the card

    At risk: what happened

    Kettleman City moved from arsenic-tainted wells to State Water Project water when a treatment plant opened in 2019, and by 2021 its community services district depended wholly on the aqueduct. With the 2021 State Water Project allocation cut to 5 percent, about 45 acre-feet against a minimum need of roughly 300, the district and Kings County warned the Department of Water Resources in October 2021 that the town would run out of water by December. The state granted 96 acre-feet for residential health and safety only, and in January 2022 the county bought 235 acre-feet of carryover water as a one-year stopgap.

    • Mojave Water Agency (via CEQAnet): Transfer of Article 56 carryover water from Mojave Water Agency to County of Kings (CEQA notice of exemption) (January 19, 2022)
    • The San Joaquin Valley Sun: Kettleman in crisis: poor Kings Co. town becomes intersection of I-5, 41, and zero water (October 8, 2021)
    • SJV Water: Drought could dry up popular I-5 oasis (October 13, 2021)