There’s plenty of legal jargon that goes over Jake Furstenfeld’s head when he tunes in via Zoom to court proceedings tied to a Cuyama Valley groundwater dispute.
This wasn’t the case, however, when the local rancher and others with stakes in a lawsuit over water rights for a critically overdrafted basin heard a judge’s tentative order in early February.
“That was one of the first positive things that had come out of this,” Furstenfeld said. “It kind of gave me a glimmer of hope.”
While citing newly passed state legislation, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Highberger said that he would potentially exempt around 100 Cuyama Valley growers and residents considered “small pumpers,” due to their low water use, from the adjudication. A follow-up hearing is scheduled for early March.
Furstenfeld said he was already familiar with the law the court referenced because it was a direct response to Cuyama residents’ plight, according to its author, Assemblymember Gregg Hart (D-Santa Barbara).
“I introduced Assembly Bill 1466 because of the issues in the Cuyama Valley,” said Hart, who met many Cuyama residents “to hear directly from them their concerns about what’s going on with the major agricultural operations in the valley” prior to drafting the bill.
Signed into law in January, AB 1644 provides protection “for small water users whose local water supplies are threatened by corporations,” Hart told the Sun.
In 2021, two commercial carrot growers—Bolthouse Farms and Grimmway Farms—sued all water users who rely on the Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin over groundwater rights. Hart described the lawsuit as consistent with a trend that he believes was an unintended consequence of previous groundwater legislation.
The goal behind California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)—which the state passed in 2014—was to regulate water use in basins, like Cuyama’s, that were “getting dangerously low,” Hart explained.
“Since it’s a shared resource amongst many property owners, you need to have some mechanism that forces us to look at it strategically and systematically and make informed decisions about how much individuals should be pumping,” Hart said. “We’re in year 10 of that process, so there were some lessons learned, and one thing that we’ve learned is that the disparity between well-funded, large agricultural operations and their neighbors creates an imbalance of power.”
In the years following SGMA’s introduction, water rights lawsuits sprung up across the state, Hart said, often centered on legal disputes over groundwater cutbacks. These suits were costly for low water users, from small farmers to regular residents of communities with critical water supplies.
‘Anybody who has a quarter of a brain can see exactly where the overpumping is taking place and where it’s not.’
—Cuyama resident Jake Furstenfeld
“Folks had high hopes that [SGMA] would be a better system. But what we’ve learned is that the large agricultural operations, specifically in Cuyama and other places, … go through the groundwater sustainability process and agree to a consensus solution, and then immediately go out of that collaborative process into a litigation process,” Hart said. “That’s when it’s really unfair because they have the financial means to go to court and be represented by lawyers and go through what could be a five- or 10-year process to adjudicate the groundwater rights.
“And that’s where the small pumpers just can’t do that,” Hart continued. “They can’t afford to hire a lawyer to go to all these meetings and represent themselves in court in front of a judge.”
Hart recognized that although SGMA offered small, disadvantaged farmers some protections in groundwater adjudications, there were unclear standards for courts to follow when determining whether to exempt a minor-use pumper. Without a clear way to streamline this process for low water users, lengthy proceedings could skew outcomes in favor of parties with ample financial resources.
“There needed to be a step for folks to get out of that adjudication process; to let their modest, small, insignificant-in-the-big-picture water use get treated as such,” Hart said. “[AB 1644] allows courts to hold an early preliminary hearing to determine whether small and disadvantaged pumpers should be exempt or separately managed.”
The bill also requires groundwater agencies to prepare technical reports that give courts reviewing adjudication cases “a complete picture” of all water use in the respective basin.
“Anybody who has a quarter of a brain can see exactly where the overpumping is taking place and where it’s not,” Cuyama resident Furstenfeld said of the groundwater basin he relies on.
Like Hart, Furstenfeld wasn’t sure AB 1466 would help Cuyama residents retroactively. Hart sees it as a way to prevent disadvantaged communities from being entangled in lengthy adjudications like Cuyama’s in the future.
When Furstenfeld heard the judge reference AB 1466, he was pleasantly surprised.
“He’s been an awesome advocate, especially for us small pumpers,” Furstenfeld said of Hart. “I’ve been very grateful for what he’s doing.”
Furstenfeld isn’t a commercial farmer, but he relies on the area’s groundwater for regular household purposes that people take for granted, as well as to tend his personal vegetable garden on the ranch his family owns.
“If you take a bath and you use that water, you’re part of it,” he said.
Some small-scale commercial farmers in the area, like Cuyama Homegrown owners Jean Gaillard and Meg Brown, are hoping the adjudication will conclude with their property being granted at least 5 acre-feet of groundwater per year.
Gaillard told the Sun that, over the course of the lawsuit, he and his wife have spent $4,000 in legal fees, which they otherwise would have invested in improving their property. The couple decided to put their plan to build a permitted commercial kitchen for their jam-making business on the backburner.
“We could have done other things with that money. It’s not growing on our back,” Gaillard said. “We should have a chance to expand our business. And we want other people to come to Cuyama and invest in Cuyama, but that’s not happening right now because there’s these water issues. Investors are not coming to the valley as long as they’re not sure about their water rights.”
Reach Senior Staff Writer Caleb Wiseblood at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in February 19 – February 26, 2026.