Dozens of subsistence farmers and ranchers in the Cuyama Valley, enmeshed in a water rights lawsuit that was filed against them by the world’s largest carrot corporations, got some welcome news this month.
The presiding judge, William F. Highberger of the Los Angeles Superior Court, has issued a tentative order that would “excuse” 115 valley landowners from the four-year-old case, also called a water rights “adjudication,” because of their low water use.
Many of these defendants are barely eking out a living in the vast, dry agricultural region east of Santa Maria. Some own small commercial vineyards, vegetable farms or herds of cattle. Others pump only enough water to meet their household needs. Some families go back generations in the valley.
On Feb. 2, speaking at a hearing in Los Angeles that was streamed live to an audience at the Cuyama Valley Family Resource Center on Highway 166, Highberger said he wanted to give “minor extractors,” or small-scale water users, “as much of a free pass as possible.”
The judge said he did not want to subject these landowners to the mandatory pumping reductions and mounting legal fees that lie ahead for dozens of larger farming operations that are parties to the lawsuit. One group of small farmers says it has already paid several hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
In his tentative order, Highberger proposed to grant small-scale water users something else they were asking for, too: the right to pump a little more water every year than what they have historically used on their properties. These defendants told the judge they had been careful not to waste water in the past and did not want to be penalized for conserving.
“I have been persuaded that allowing some upward take is rational and is consistent with the legislative intent,” Highberger said. “… I think that giving the people who currently are minor extractors some hope that their dream homes and dream ranches can continue to be enjoyed by themselves and future generations and that they can try to improve the economic utility of their assets will be an important stabilizing factor in this remote community …”
The plaintiffs in the case are the land management companies for Grimmway Enterprises Inc., the world’s largest carrot corporation, and Bolthouse Farms, the second largest. They have opposed granting any extra water to any valley landowners beyond their historical use.
In a Jan. 26 brief to the court, the plaintiffs argued that granting additional water to small-scale users “in excess of their reasonable need” amounted to “inequitable treatment” and would constitute a “windfall” for some landowners “at the expense of other minor extractors and water users in the basin.”
‘Essentially a reward‘
The 2021 lawsuit has left most valley landowners feeling like David in an unequal contest with Goliath. Well water is the sole source of water in this land of little rain — 13 inches per year, on average. The town of New Cuyama, population 700, gets an annual eight inches, on average. The definition of a desert is less than 10 inches of rain per year.
The water basin underlying the valley is immense: it covers 380 square miles and overlaps four counties. But during the past 70 years, over-pumping for industrial-scale farming — first for alfalfa and now for baby carrots — has caused a steep decline in underground water levels. Today, the Cuyama Valley is on the state list of 21 basins in “critical overdraft.” Under state law, it must be brought back into balance by 2040.
To reach that goal, agricultural pumping in the Cuyama Valley will have to be cut by at least 50 percent, according to the local Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA). The group that was set up in 2017 to come up with a plan for mandatory cutbacks. Now it will be up to Highberger to determine who gets cut, and by how much.
At the Feb. 2 hearing, Highberger said the “unavoidable reductions” that must be made by large farming operations “will be a clear body blow to the stability of the population and the ongoing economic health of the community.”
Giving extra water to small-scale users, the judge said, would be “essentially a reward for those who feel a historic connection to the land and the community to stay there and enjoy the many charms of the Cuyama Valley.”
Highberger said he was basing his tentative order in part on legislation that was successfully carried by state Assemblyman Gregg Hart, D-Santa Barbara, and went into effect on Jan. 1.
The new law allows the court in water rights cases to treat small-scale users separately from other parties “by separately entering orders with respect to those persons, in order to reduce their burden of participation and more efficiently administer the case.”
Highberger set a March 4 date for a status conference to fine-tune his order and adjust the list of 115 small-scale users. Some names may be duplicates and will drop off the list. Landowners who have still not registered with the court may yet make the list as small-scale water users.
‘Heart and soul‘
Robbie Jaffe, who dry-farms five acres of wine grapes and olive trees at Condor’s Hope Ranch in the foothills at the southwestern end of the valley, called the judge’s tentative order “phenomenal.”
“I think he really understands that those of us who are minor pumpers are not the cause of the overdraft in the basin,” she said. “We are the heart and soul of the valley. We want the ability to stay here and maintain our natural environment. We don’t look at water as a commodity like the large growers do.”
Jaffee said she and her husband, Stephen Gliessman, are “on the elder end of farming” and have been wanting to expand their operations with an eye to future owners. The extra water that Highberger is proposing to allow for small-scale users would make all the difference, she said.
Condor’s Hope is one of 28 defendants, most of them small-scale users, who appear in the case as the Coalition of Landowners for Commonsense Groundwater Solutions. In court briefs, they asked the judge to exempt them from the lawsuit so that they did not “find themselves dispossessed of minimum essential water to maintain a community.” Collectively, Jaffe said, they have spent “several hundred thousand dollars” on legal fees to date.
To qualify as small-scale under state water law, a landowner may not pump more than five acre-feet of water yearly. (That’s an amount equal to a year’s supply for about 15 urban households.)
At the coalition’s request, Highberger is proposing to allow every landowner on the list of 115 to pump up to five acre-feet of water per year, with a caveat. Historically, small-scale users have each used about one acre-foot per year, on average, or 132 acre-feet collectively. The judge is proposing to allow them up to 400 acre-feet per year, collectively. If the total demand ever exceeds that amount, he said, the court will intervene to distribute the water fairly.
Four hundred acre-feet is just under two percent of the safe yield of the valley’s water basin, set by the court at 20,370 acre-feet. That’s the maximum amount of water that can be pumped out yearly and replenished by rain, over time.
In 2024, Grimmway and Bolthouse Land pumped 22,720 acre-feet of water for carrots out of the basin, GSA records show. That’s more than the safe yield; and it’s as much water as a two-year supply for the City of Santa Barbara, population 87,000.
“I do not think it is fair for some big corporations to trample all the small people in the valley, which is what they’ve been doing,” said Kathleen March, owner of the Walking U Ranch, a cattle operation at the western end of the valley. March said the lawsuit was a “huge burden, financially” on small-scale users “who never, never overdraft the valley.”
“Their water use is sustainable,” she said. “It’s the giant carrot growers who have acted inequitably.”
March, an attorney who is representing herself in the case, said Walking U lost four water cisterns in the Gifford Fire of August 2025. The extra water that Highberger is proposing to allow for small-scale users would make it possible for her to expand her herd, produce more calves for auction and raise money to repair the fire damage, March said.
“You could call it hopeful,” she said of the judge’s order.
Also included in the group of small-scale users is the Cuyama Mutual Water District, serving five households and three businesses just off Highway 166 in “old” Cuyama; the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and several federal agencies with land in the valley.
A looming deadline
In preparation for a final order regarding small-scale users, Highberger announced a March 27 deadline for them to turn in workbooks showing their annual water use from 2010 to 2011; and to register with the court as parties in the case.
Court records suggest there may be dozens of landowners who have not yet come forward to fill out the required paperwork. They include a private water company with 12 customers in Ventucopa, at the eastern end of the valley.
Some of the “missing” landowners may live outside the valley and be unaware of the lawsuit; others may not be pumping any water, and some may not want any government intrusion in their lives, their neighbors said. The valley is a remote place where people place a premium on being left alone.
But after four years, lots of publicity and multiple attempts to reach missing landowners through snail mail, email and property postings, small-scale users who fail to file with the court by the deadline risk losing their water rights, Highberger said.
Not all of the small farmers in the valley are happy with the judge’s tentative order. Alisa Daar, who watched the proceedings at the Resource Center last week, said that a five-acre yearly cap on her water use would affect the price of her 40-acre ranch with 400 fruit trees in Ventucopa, at the eastern end of the valley. Daar said she was planning to sell the ranch soon.
“When we bought the property, I had big dreams of planting as many trees as my heart desired,” she said. “But now our property values are down because the next person can’t dream like I did.”
James Woodbury, Daar’s husband, noted that Bolthouse and Grimmway spray water on their crops with industrial sprinklers that send out “huge arcs of water over their fields.” Much of the water, he said, “is immediately carried away by the heavy, gusty and constant winds we have here in this valley.” The court should not reward “profligate wasters” of water while “penalizing responsible users,” Woodbury said.
‘Zero-sum game‘
As the lawsuit proceeds glacially through the courts, the Cuyama Valley GSA is implementing a 6.5 percent yearly pumping reduction in the flat central region of the valley where carrots are dominant. Bolthouse and Grimmway are represented on the GSA board, but they oppose limiting pumping reductions to the central region. They filed their lawsuit in response to the GSA plan for mandatory cutbacks.
In 2023, valley residents launched a carrot boycott against Bolthouse and Grimmway, demanding that they drop the lawsuit and reimburse defendants for their attorneys’ fees.
Amid a burst of boycott publicity, both of the farm corporations removed themselves from the case, leaving their land management companies as plaintiffs. They are the Bolthouse Land Co., a subsidiary of Bolthouse Farms; and the Diamond Farming, Ruby Land and Lapis Land companies, landowners for Grimmway. All are based in Bakersfield.
In state records, Grimm family members are listed as co-CEOs of Diamond Farming and managers of the Legacy Farm Management LLC, a company that is listed, in turn, as manager of the Ruby and Lapis real estate companies.
In their briefs to the court, the plaintiffs have supported granting water rights to small-scale users based on their maximum annual historical use — and not one drop more.
“Balancing a groundwater basin is a zero-sum game,” they wrote on Jan. 26. “The Court cannot allocate water to a new water use without taking that water from an existing water user … The court must decide whether the limited supply should be allocated to existing users, not speculative or newly fabricated future uses.”
The plaintiffs have rejected arguments that compare their water use to the “negligible” use of the small-scale users. The question of who caused the basin overdraft is not “legally relevant,” they said, because all landowners pumping water out of the basin have contributed to its decline, “regardless of amount.”
One battle after another
Still to be resolved in the case is a water allocation for the Cuyama Community Services District, serving New Cuyama; and an allocation for the Cuyama Joint Unified School District. Like “old” Cuyama and Ventucopa, New Cuyama is on the state’s list of “disadvantaged unincorporated communities” with low-income residents and unmet infrastructure needs.
But the “main event” in the next phase of the lawsuit will be the distribution of water rights among the plaintiffs and two dozen mid-sized and large cattle ranchers, wheat and barley farmers, pistachio growers, vintners and dairy operators in the valley.
Crucially, the judge must decide whether to apply mandatory pumping reductions equally across the board, based on historical use, or assign proportionately larger cutbacks to Bolthouse and Grimmway’s land management companies.
In the central part of the valley where the carrot companies operate, the water levels in some wells have dropped as low as 600 feet underground. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, some of the water being pumped out of the basin is “fossil water” that is 33,000 years old.
But even among the larger farming operations, the disparity in water use is great.
GSA data show that seven valley landowners who pumped between five and 100 acre-feet of water in 2024 accounted for just one percent of the basin’s safe yield. During the same year, Bolthouse and Grimmway together pumped out more than the safe yield and 12 times as much water as the third largest water user in the valley, the Sunrise Olive Ranch on Highway 33 in Maricopa.
Last week, Highberger said that in the next phase of the lawsuit, he would have to deal with what he called the “borderland” between such disparate groups of farmers. There may be opportunities for “equitable adjustments,” depending on the number of farmers involved, Highberger said, but they’re not guaranteed.
Melinda Burns, a former senior writer for the Santa Barbara News-Press, is an investigative reporter with 40 years of experience covering immigration, water, science and the environment.
