From Brownstein Hyatt Farber Shreck:
The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (“SGMA”) is now in its fourth year of operation. Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (“GSAs”) have been formed throughout the medium- and high-priority basins across California, and those GSAs are now developing Groundwater Sustainability Plans (“GSP”). The GSPs will ultimately afford greater long-term groundwater supply reliability by avoiding chronic groundwaer depletion and other “undesirable results,” such as signficant loss of storage, water quality degradation, subsidence, and seawater intrusion.
To achieve sustainable management in basins experiencing pronounced overdraft conditions, either augmented recharge will be necessary or groundwater extractions will need to be reduced over time. This process will affect municipal water suppliers that rely on groundwater basins that are subject to SGMA’s provision. It is, thus, important that municipal water suppliers understand the requirements of SGMA, the potential impacts to their groundwater supplies, and the procedural and substantive options and strategies that should be considered throughout the process.
To that effect, this paper will cover:
1. An overview of SGMA and its essential provisions;
2. The issues that will need to be resolved to implement SGMA, including the potential
division of available water supplies within a basin;
3. A summary of key groundwater rights laws;
4. A discussion of groundwater basin adjudications and new laws designed to streamline future adjudications and harmonize their results with SGMA; and
5. Strategies that municipal water providers may employ to optimize outcomes from the SGMA/adjudication process.
Read the report from Brownstein Hyatt Farber Shreck here: Report: An Assessment of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act for Municipal Water Suppliers.