Another reality is that the city's water system serves less than half of the city's residents. California Water Service Co. While the companies' future water supplies are not as abundant as those of the city, their officials also say they are well fixed for future growth. All of them rely on wells to serve their customers, but most also purchase water imported from the State Water Project or have rights to some Kern River water. Unlike the city system, some of the companies' imported water goes into a treatment plant operated by the Kern County Water Agency and is distributed directly to customers. But some is also allowed to percolate underground for later pumping.
Similar arrangements exist in most other cities up and down the valley.
But farmers increasingly see the expanding cities as competitors for the most vital resource of the region's agriculture industry. When push comes to shove, cities always can afford to pay more for imported surface water than farmers can. With prospects bleak for a major increase in supplies for the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, farmers fear the cities will get a growing share of the surface water from the two projects. That could force farmers to rely more and more heavily on ground water, which in most parts of the valley already is being drawn down faster than it can be recharged by a combination of imports and rainfall. That position draws support from gloomy forecasts in the latest update of the California Water Plan issued three months ago by the state Department of Water Resources.