The District provides an imported water supply, groundwater resource management, and flood protection.  The District imports State Water Project (SWP) water from the California Aqueduct and sells this imported water to municipal & industrial (M&I) and agricultural (Ag) customers.  Approximately one-half to two-thirds of imported water sales are for agricultural customers in a typical year. 

The local groundwater supply is located in three basins, which are the Brite, Cummings, and Tehachapi Basins.  The District is the court-appointed Watermaster for these three adjudicated basins.  As Watermaster, the District protects the groundwater resources within the basins by administering the judgments and providing annual reports to the Kern County Superior Court as required.

Early each calendar year, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) makes allocations of water resources from the State Water Project (SWP).  A 100% Table A Allocation of SWP water amounts to 19,300 acre-feet (AF).  The District is physically limited to 10,000 AF of importation capacity due to the size of existing pumping and pipeline infrastructure and customer demand and banking requirements are typically forecast using that threshold.  In years when the District’s allocation exceeds demand or storage capacity, water is banked inside the District within the Tehachapi and Cummings Basins to the benefit of the District’s account and the basins as a whole as well as outside of the District in San Joaquin Valley water banking projects as necessary. 

As storage and conveyance opportunities arise, the District considers entering into cooperative agreements with one or more Kern County Water Agency Member Units to bank water that it can’t physically import into the District.  Then, in years when the SWP allocation doesn’t meet demand, banked water from within and outside of the District is utilized to supplement the allocated supplies.