For the first time in its history, California will establish statewide management of water pumped from the ground, under legislation signed this week by Gov. Jerry Brown. The package of regulations was heralded by supporters as a long-overdue step in changing the state’s laissez-faire approach to underground water sources that can account for up to 60% of Californians’ water supply.

“This is a big deal,” Brown said at a signing ceremony in the Capitol. “It’s been known about for decades that underground water has to be managed and regulated in some way.”

The plan is contained in three bills. SB 1168 by Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) instructs local agencies to create management plans. A measure by Assemblyman Roger Dickinson (D-Sacramento), AB 1739, establishes when the state can intervene if the local groups don’t do their job satisfactorily. A third measure, SB 1319, also by Pavley, is intended to allay some farmers’ concerns by postponing state action in places where surface water has been depleted by groundwater pumping. The legislation won’t offer immediate relief. Because it will take years to craft and implement the management plans, the full effect of the regulations — the recovery of severely over-pumped basins — won’t be felt until at least 2040.

Some in the farming community are in agreement with the new rules, including Miles Reiter, chief executive officer of Driscoll’s berry farming and a California Board of Food & Agriculture member. “It will be a painful process because we have a lot to do,” he said at the signing event. “But it is the only chance we have to continue to farm the extraordinary land that we have available to us and to continue to do our part to feed the world.”

But many Republicans and Central Valley Democrats, along with major farm groups, remain staunchly opposed to the plan. Paul Wenger, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, said the bills “may come to be seen as ‘historic’ for all the wrong reasons” by drastically harming food production.

Assemblyman Jim Patterson (R-Fresno) predicted that the regulations would bring lawsuits: “There’s really going to be a wrestling match over who’s going to get the water.”

The overarching goal, according to the legislation, is to ensure California’s groundwater is managed sustainably, generally defined as avoiding “chronic lowering” of aquifer levels. It is not a small issue: Groundwater makes up about 60 percent of all fresh water consumed in California during drought years, and about 40 percent in average years.

Under the legislation, each of these landowners eventually would come under the jurisdiction of a new local “groundwater sustainability agency.” These agencies would prepare a groundwater plan, which, for the first time, will set rules on when and how much water each well owner can pump. The local agency could be a county government or a new entity formed by residents specifically to comply with the law. If no local agency emerges, the state would prepare a groundwater plan for the area. Either way, in basic terms, the government would be telling farmers how to operate their wells.

“You just start thinking about it, and the magnitude of this is pretty large,” said David Guy of the Northern California Water Assn. “In certain parts of the state, there’s probably going to be some major sea changes as part of this.”

For example, many wells, because they have never been regulated, lack flow meters to measure how much water is extracted. Local groundwater agencies are likely to require well owners to install flow meters as a first step to understand the demand on aquifers. An agricultural flow meter can cost several thousand dollars to buy and install, and many farms have several wells. There are ongoing costs involved in collecting data from these meters.
Local agencies would be empowered to impose fees on well owners to cover the costs of preparing a sustainability plan, monitoring pumping and carrying out enforcement. The agencies could undertake long-term water management activities. For example, they would be able to buy water to recharge aquifers and buy land to construct lakes or settling basins where that water could be pooled to soak into the ground. In addition, the agencies would be charged with protecting the quality of groundwater and have the ability to take actions to prevent pollution.

“The unanswered question is going to be the cost,” said Guy. “I think there’s going to be some significant expenses that might go into developing some of these plans.”

Local agencies would have five to seven years to submit a groundwater plan. DWR would have two years to conduct an initial plan review and must review the plans again every five years. In each case, it could recommend corrective actions. Each local agency would have 20 years to achieve the sustainability goals in its plan.

Richard Frank, a professor of environmental law at UC Davis, said these time frames are too long. “By the time this process cranks up in five, 10 or 20 years, the damage may long have been done,” said Frank.

He also is concerned about a clause in the legislation that forbids public disclosure of personal information in reports on groundwater extraction. The clause cites a section of the Public Records Act that prohibits disclosure of information about utility customers, including name, address and “utility usage data.” If this is applied broadly in the case of groundwater, researchers and the public would not be able to access information on the location of wells and the rate of groundwater extraction.

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/15/6706392/california-poised-to-restrict.html