The lawsuit alleges<\/a> that farmer Jimmy Anderson leveraged his dominant acreage position to seize control of Pleasant Valley Water District and GSA, installing a quorum on the board composed of relatives, employees, business associates and partners.\u00a0<\/p>\n And that he initiated a series of policies essentially giving himself a captive water market, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s getting serious,\u201d said plaintiff Brad Gleason. \u201cPeople who don\u2019t buy credits from the president have trees that are dying. He can pick and choose who he sells water to, which adds insult to injury.\u201d<\/p>\n When reached by phone, Anderson said he was not aware of the lawsuit and would \u201cwait to hear about it at the next board meeting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n That meeting is July 28 at Harris Ranch in Coalinga.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anderson is the largest landowner in Pleasant Valley and identified in the lawsuit as the owner of Wheat Land.<\/p>\n According to the complaint, after Anderson was installed as president, the voting bloc demanded the resignation of the GSA\u2019s general counsel and hired a new attorney along with a new treasurer, who plaintiffs claim is an employee of Wheat Land.\u00a0<\/p>\n The voting bloc then passed pumping and groundwater credit policies favorable to Anderson\u2019s vast land holdings, giving all acreage, from pasture to solar farms and pistachio orchards, an equal allocation despite their historical water use, according to the lawsuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anderson owns a feedlot that isn\u2019t irrigated. He also has land planted to pistachios and grows row crops such as garlic and wheat, which use less water than permanent crops such as pistachios, the dominant crop in Pleasant Valley.<\/p>\n That alleged \u201cwater scheme\u201d shifted the balance of groundwater credits, giving Anderson an abundance<\/a> and cutting supplies for others. that forced plaintiffs and other growers to buy water from Anderson, according to the lawsuit. Plaintiffs have already spent $200,000 this growing season buying water from Anderson\u2019s Wheat Land, the suit states.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis board is arranged in such a way that we can\u2019t overcome the voting bloc,\u201d Gleason said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to use the courts to help straighten this out, which is unfortunate because it\u2019s not going to be cheap.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Pleasant Valley lawsuit was filed by partnerships run by three of the Pleasant Valley GSA board\u2019s nine members.\u00a0<\/p>\n Plaintiffs Valley Nut Growers LP, NK Development and Lovelace & Sons Farming are businesses operated by Brian Whelan, James Nichols and Joe Lovelace, respectively.<\/p>\n Whelan\u2019s business partner is Gleason, Pleasant Valley\u2019s former board president who was ousted<\/a> in January by Anderson.\u00a0<\/p>\n The lawsuit is the latest development in the 48,000-acre subbasin on the western edge of Fresno County. In 2024, oversight of the Pleasant Valley subbasin shifted to the state Water Resources Control Board for lacking an adequate groundwater plan.<\/p>\n As the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act\u2019s (SGMA) enforcement arm, the Water Board is considering whether to place the subbasin on probation<\/a>, which comes with fees and greater scrutiny.\u00a0<\/p>\n A new groundwater plan was reworked under Anderson\u2019s board and submitted to the state in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last month, an anonymous grower circulated a letter to all 32 landowners, complaining about a proposed $750 an acre foot pumping fee and the lack of a regulated, basin-wide groundwater accounting platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pleasant Valley GSA manager Sarah Woolf said the agency had not yet been served with the lawsuit, though she was aware of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll see where this gets us,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n A case management conference is set for Oct. 21 in Fresno County Superior Court.\u00a0<\/p>\n Other adjudications are ongoing in the eastern and western fringes of Kern County in the Indian Wells Valley<\/a> and Cuyama<\/a> subbasins as well as the Fox Canyon<\/a> subbasin in Ventura County.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Farmers frustrated with recent actions by the Pleasant Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) board filed a lawsuit July…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-399403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_4005-1024x598.jpeg\")
Pleasant Valley GSA President Jimmy Anderson, left, listens to a presentation during a June 23 meeting. At right are board members William Fisher, Karen d\u2019Artenay and Craig Finster. Lisa McEwen \/ SJV Water<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/PleasantValley-1024x683.png\")
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