Central Valley Project
Porterville Irrigation District has a contract with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for 15,000 acre-feet of Class 1 water and 30,000 acre-feet of Class 2 water. (The difference between the types of water is merely the reliability of supply. Class 1 water is generally considered to be the contracted supply that can be managed through storage regulation and scheduled for delivery at the contractor’s convenience, whereas Class 2 is made available under wetter conditions and is not necessarily schedulable at the contractor’s convenience.)
The Central Valley Project (CVP) was constructed in the 1940s and 1950s to supply water from some of California’s hydrologically wetter regions to agricultural areas and communities with relatively less reliable surface water supplies by way of the Friant-Kern Canal (FKC). The FKC was completed in 1949. It is 153 miles long and carries water from Millerton Lake to the Tulare and Kern counties in the south, terminating in the Kern River about four miles west of Bakersfield.
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Current USBR allocation for 2023-2024 water year is 100% Class 1 (15,000 af), and 70% Class 2 (21,000 af)
(updated 03/13/2023)
Tule River Water
The District also controls, by agreement with the Porter Slough Ditch Company, the Hubbs & Miner Ditch Company, the Rhodes-Fine Ditch Company, and the Gilliam-McGee Ditch Company, a supply of Tule River water. A portion of these Tule River waters is able to be stored behind Success Dam which was completed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1961. The total of the entitlement to Tule River water of the above-mentioned ditch companies averages approximately 12,900 acre-feet annually at Success Dam (renamed the Richard L. Schafer Dam in 2019).