A judge pushed back the Cuyama groundwater adjudication’s first phase to Oct. 9 because Bolthouse Farms and Grimmway Farms failed to publish a notice in a local news outlet and still need to serve 314 landowners, Los Angeles Bankruptcy Law Firm Attorney Kay March told the Sun.
California civil codes require those serving adjudications to notify every landowner involved by posting the complaint on individual properties and publishing in a news outlet before starting the trial, said March, who is representing her own property, Walking U Ranch LLC.
“This cannot be a comprehensive adjudication unless the court has jurisdiction over all the landowners in the basin. The only way for the court to get jurisdiction is for there to be proper service,” March said.
In August 2021, Bolthouse and Grimmway—the two largest corporate carrot growers in the valley—filed an adjudication for groundwater rights against every Cuyama Valley landowner shortly after the State Department of Groundwater Resources approved the Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin’s sustainability plan—which called for a 60 percent reduction in groundwater use. If residents fail to join the lawsuit, they could risk losing their groundwater rights altogether.
As of Aug. 7, Bolthouse and Grimmway hadn’t agreed to post on the remaining 314 properties—more than a third of Cuyama’s landowners, March said, adding that she filed a petition to direct the court to order posting.
“We want to get it right the first time. We don’t want to [go to trial] twice because the court didn’t have subject matter jurisdiction,” she said.
In response to the case’s upcoming court date, Cuyama Valley residents launched a carrot boycott on July 30, calling people to stop purchasing Bolthouse and Grimmway products, specifically carrots, March said.
“You should never turn your nose up at a boycott and say, ‘This is just a few residents in the Cuyama Valley.’ Boycotts are extremely powerful,” March said. “Several decades ago, Cesar Chavez wanted to unionize farmworkers and they started a nationwide boycott of table grapes. That boycott eventually brought the employer, the ag business, to its knees.”
Grimmway and Bolthouse are responsible for about 80 percent of the U.S. carrot market, with an annual crop worth about $69 million, said Jacob Furstenfeld, a Walking U LLC rancher who helped organize the boycott.
“We want Grimmway and Bolthouse to drop the lawsuit against all the stakeholders in the Cuyama Valley because it is draining people’s pockets, with people selling trucks to people filing for bankruptcy,” Furstenfeld said. “It’s literally do or die for people out here.”
Furstenfeld is helping circulate a petition calling for the corporate carrot growers to drop the lawsuit, agree to the groundwater sustainability plan, and reimburse every landowner involved, he said. As of Aug. 7, the petition had 1,300 signatures with the goal to reach 10,000 signatures.
“If it takes 10,000 or 10 million signatures, that’s what we’ll do. We’re just going to keep going,” Furstenfeld said. “I truly know and believe that this has united us as a community more than any other issue I’ve seen in the 32 years I’ve been here.”
Furstenfeld was also sued even though he doesn’t own property and said that this has been a very nerve-racking experience for him and other Cuyama residents.
“I’m on-edge for how long this phase one is going to last. My lawyer is in trial right now and I don’t know how big my bill is going to be this month,” he said. “I’m hoping for something positive, but I’ve been waiting for a positive for eight years now.”
When the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act passed in 2014 to address critically overdrafted basins like Cuyama’s, Furstenfeld said that it was a daunting process to create the required Groundwater Sustainability Agency and a sustainability plan. When Cuyama’s groundwater sustainability plan was accepted, residents started receiving lawsuit notices.
“There hasn’t been a lot of good news coming out of this,” he said. “It’s been a lot more questions than answers and it doesn’t seem like it’s very positive as far as things are going to change,” Furstenfeld said. “You get more drought and more bad news. When is it going to get better?”
Grimmway Farms spokesperson Dana Brennman told the Sun that Grimmway could not comment at this time regarding the adjudication or the boycott. Bolthouse Farms did not respond to the Sun’s inquiry for comment.
