Southern San Joaquin Municipal Utility District

Southern San Joaquin Municipal Utility District (SSJMUD) is a U.S. local government entity based in Delano, California, that has been registered in SAM.gov since May 2009. The District provides water management and infrastructure services to its service area in Kern County, focusing on groundwater recharge initiatives and water conveyance improvements to enhance regional water supply reliability and drought resilience in California's San Joaquin Valley.

SSJMUD has received substantial federal grant funding through the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation under the Reclamation States Emergency Drought Relief program (CFDA 15.514), totaling approximately $21.5 million across five project grants awarded between May 2022 and December 2025. The District's grant-funded work encompasses the design and construction of groundwater recharge infrastructure, including the Woollomes Avenue Recharge Project ($6,417,900), which will convert 320 acres into recharge ponds and improve water conveyance to increase annual groundwater recharge by 9,800 acre-feet; the Caratan Groundwater Recharge Facility ($4,598,053), a 160-acre recharge basin near Lake Woollomes that will provide 5,560 acre-feet of annual recharge capacity; and the Driver Road Pipeline project ($4,344,936), which involves installing PVC pipeline infrastructure to deliver wet year surface water supplies to existing recharge basins while maintaining irrigation deliveries. Additionally, SSJMUD completed an earlier project ($6,107,566 awarded in May 2022) that involved improving existing conveyance facilities, constructing 75 acres of recharge ponds with 6,120 acre-feet of annual capacity, and connecting recovery wells to the conveyance system. The District is also undertaking an SSJMUD-NKWSD Intertie Pipeline project for regional drought resiliency, demonstrating the entity's commitment to multi-jurisdictional water infrastructure collaboration. These grants support SSJMUD's efforts to build long-term drought resilience by capturing and managing excess surface water supplies during wet years for use during drought periods, directly addressing the region's periodic severe drought conditions and reduced water deliveries from California's water storage systems.