News Keyword: Groundwater Sustainability Plan Development

DWR Releases Decisions for Groundwater Management Plans in Critically Overdrafted Basins

Department of Water Resources Will Transmit Six Basin Determinations to State Water Board, Beginning State Intervention Process

From the Department of Water Resources:

The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today announced decisions for groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) for 12 critically overdrafted groundwater basins in Central California. These plans provide a roadmap for how groundwater basins will reach long-term sustainability, while implementing near-term actions such as expanding monitoring programs, reporting annually on groundwater conditions, implementing groundwater recharge projects and designing allocation programs.

Of the 12, plans for six basins are recommended for approval with recommended corrective actions for the basins to remain in an approved status. The remaining six basins are deemed inadequate and are transitioning from DWR’s oversight to the State Water Board for State intervention under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Adopted in 2014, SGMA requires local groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) in medium- and high-priority groundwater basins, which includes 21 critically overdrafted basins, to develop and implement GSPs.

DWR recommends approval of plans for the following basins:

    • Cuyama Basin in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Ventura and Kern counties
    • Paso Robles Subbasin in San Luis Obispo County
    • Eastern San Joaquin Subbasin in San Joaquin County
    • Merced Subbasin in Merced County
    • Westside Subbasin in Fresno and Kings counties
    • Kings Subbasin in Fresno County

DWR deemed the following basin plans Inadequate:

    • Chowchilla Subbasin in Madera and Merced counties
    • Delta-Mendota Subbasin in San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Fresno, Madera, and San Benito counties
    • Kaweah Subbasin in Tulare and Kings counties
    • Tule Subbasin in Tulare County
    • Tulare Lake Subbasin in Kings County
    • Kern Subbasin in Kern County

GSAs are required to begin implementing their plans as soon as they are adopted locally, and these activities will continue even if basins are under State intervention. These plans will help local agencies address conditions that negatively impact groundwater within 20 years such as groundwater overdraft, degraded groundwater quality, land subsidence, and impacts to drinking water well users.

The GSAs whose plans are recommended for approval conducted critical analysis of groundwater levels, water quality and inter-connected surface waters to develop and refine sustainable groundwater management criteria. While additional analytical work is needed during implementation, DWR deemed the framework for management sufficient under the law.

“Since the onset of SGMA, local agencies have stepped up with dedication and progress in meeting critical milestones,” said DWR Director Karla Nemeth. “Protecting domestic wells, minimizing land subsidence and protecting groundwater resources are all State priorities. Implementation of these plans, which will require difficult adjustments as we go, will ultimately provide a safe and reliable groundwater supply for communities for generations to come.”

The basins deemed inadequate by DWR did not appropriately address deficiencies in how GSAs structured their sustainable management criteria. The management criteria provide an operating range for how groundwater levels prevent undesirable effects such as overdraft, land subsidence and groundwater levels that may impact drinking water wells, within 20 years. These GSAs did not analyze and justify continued groundwater level declines and land subsidence. Further, the GSPs lacked a clear understanding of how the management criteria may cause undesired effects on groundwater users in the basins or critical infrastructure.

In January 2022, after technical evaluation, DWR found the plans in these 12 critically overdrafted basins to be incomplete, identifying significant deficiencies that precluded approval. The GSAs had 180 days to correct the deficiencies and revise and resubmit their plans to DWR for re-evaluation, consistent with the regulations.

The basins with plans recommended for approval will continue to work with DWR and report on their progress in implementing their plans and completing corrective actions. DWR will transmit each basin deemed inadequate to the State Water Board, which may designate the basin probationary after providing public notice and then holding a public hearing. Any probationary designation will identify the deficiencies that led to intervention and potential actions to remedy the deficiencies. At the hearing, interested parties will have the opportunity to provide comments and technical information to the State Water Board regarding the deficiencies that were identified in the plans. Each basin is unique and will be evaluated individually by the State Water Board. State intervention and oversight is a critical step in making sure these basins succeed in achieving sustainable groundwater conditions. The ultimate goal is to have all basins return to local management with a clear path on how to achieve sustainability within 20 years of their original plan submittal.

DWR supports local agencies by providing planning, technical and financial assistance to help GSAs and local communities in this long-term effort to sustainably manage their groundwater basins. The critically overdrafted basins each received $7.6 million in Sustainable Groundwater Management grant funding to help them implement their plans. Complementary funding programs like DWR’s LandFlex program, state drought assistance programs, and the California Department of Conservation’s Multibenefit Land Repurposing program are helping the most critically overdrafted areas of the state reduce their dependence on groundwater and fast-track progress in reaching local sustainability goals.

Out of a total of 94 groundwater basins required to submit plans under SGMA, DWR has provided determinations for 24 basins and is currently reviewing an additional 61 plans from 59 of the state’s high- and medium- priority basins that were submitted to DWR in January 2022. DWR anticipates issuing determinations for the remaining basins throughout 2023.

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Media Coverage:

DWR Releases “Incomplete” Groundwater Sustainability Plan Assessments to Agencies, Initiating 180-day Timeline to Correct Deficiencies

From the Department of Water Resources:

Today, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) released four determinations on groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) developed by local agencies to meet the requirements of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).

DWR has found in its technical review that the GSPs in four basins contain deficiencies that preclude approval and the plans are determined to be Incomplete. The four basins include the Westside Subbasin, Delta-Mendota Subbasin, Cuyama Valley Basin, and Paso Robles Subbasin, located on the Central Coast and western portions of the San Joaquin Valley.

The basins with GSPs that are determined Incomplete have 180 days from today’s release of DWR’s determination to address deficiencies and resubmit their corrected GSPs to the Department for review.

DWR will issue eight additional determinations for basins that submitted GSPs in 2020 by the required two-year deadline.

The determinations can be found on the Department’s SGMA Portal. For more information related to these GSP Assessments, please find the Frequently Asked Questions: Incomplete Determinations & Next Steps on our website. For questions, please contact the Sustainable Groundwater Management Office by emailing sgmps@water.ca.gov.

THIS JUST IN … DWR Releases Second Round of Assessments of Groundwater Sustainability Plans

From the Department of Water Resources:

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) today released its second round of assessments of groundwater sustainability plans developed by local agencies to meet the requirements of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). The first round of assessments was announced in June.

DWR has assessed and approved plans for the Oxnard Subbasin and the Pleasant Valley Basin in Ventura County, and the North and South Yuba subbasins in Yuba County. These four plans were approved with recommended corrective actions the groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) will need to address in their next updated plan due by January 2025. The GSAs for these basins will continue implementing their plans to achieve SGMA’s goal of groundwater sustainability within 20 years.

DWR has notified GSAs in the Eastern San Joaquin Subbasin in San Joaquin County, the Chowchilla and Merced subbasins in Merced and Madera counties, and the Westside Subbasin in Fresno County that their plans lack specific details and will need to address deficiencies to be approved. Prior to making a final determination, DWR is requesting a consultation meeting with the GSAs to discuss actions and time necessary to improve the plans.

The four basins must address a number of deficiencies including the effect of chronic lowering of groundwater levels and land subsidence conditions on groundwater users. The GSAs will need to further analyze drinking water impacts, including the development of projects and actions. Additionally, they will be required to thoroughly understand and avoid or minimize subsidence impacts on flood control and water conveyance infrastructure, as intended by the law.

“In light of the historic and variable climate conditions we are experiencing, these decisions reinforce that managing our water resources in an adaptive and inclusive way is how groundwater sustainability will be achieved,” said DWR Director Karla Nemeth. “We appreciate and support the role of local leaders in shaping how their communities manage the change that comes from creating sustainable groundwater supplies. DWR is committed to providing additional drinking water guidance for the local groundwater agencies to make public health and safety a top priority.”

SGMA initiated a new era of local groundwater management. For the first time in California’s water history, local agencies and groundwater users are required to form GSAs and develop and implement plans to guide how they will achieve groundwater basin sustainability goals over the next 20 years.

SGMA lays out a process for continuous improvement – gathering information to fill data gaps, updating plans, and promoting science-based adaptation. Plans will be updated as new information becomes available and as conditions change in groundwater basins. DWR will review annual reports and assess each plan every five years to determine if the GSAs are on track to meet their basins’ goal.

Despite the long-term timeline, SGMA requires near-term actions that will help the state manage water resources during dry and drought years. For example, GSAs have been required to submit annual progress reports since 2020 with the most up-to-date monitoring and plan implementation information for their groundwater basins, including groundwater levels and use. This data can be accessed on the SGMA Portal.

By tracking conditions and implementation performance, the state and local agencies can better manage water resources during average and wet years to ensure groundwater will be available as a buffer during dry years.

In addition to and aligned with plan evaluation, DWR continues to support GSAs by providing planning, technical, and financial assistance. In April, DWR announced $26 million in grant funding for project investments to improve water supply security, water quality and the reliability of groundwater. Last month, DWR also released draft guidelines for public comment on planning and implementation of an additional $300 million for SGMA implementation.

These efforts align with the Newsom Administration’s goal to provide significant additional funding for projects to improve groundwater conditions and advance safe drinking water efforts for groundwater-dependent communities identified in the Governor’s Water Resilience Portfolio.

For more information about DWR’s available assistance, watch this video and visit the assistance and engagement webpage.

DWR Releases First Assessments of Initial Groundwater Sustainability Plans

From the Department of Water Resources:
 
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) today released its first assessments of groundwater sustainability plans developed by local agencies to meet the requirements of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
 
DWR has completed its assessment and approved plans for the Santa Cruz Mid-County Basin in Santa Cruz County and 180/400 Foot Aquifer Subbasin in Monterey County. The groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) for these critically over-drafted basins will continue implementing their plans to achieve SGMA’s goal of groundwater sustainability within 20 years.
 
DWR has notified GSAs for the Cuyama Valley Basin and Paso Robles Subbasin that their plans lack specific details and are not yet approved. DWR is requesting a consultation meeting with the GSAs to discuss actions necessary to improve the plans. DWR is committed to working with local agencies and providing technical and financial support to help them bring their basins into balanced levels of pumping and recharge.
 
“Local management, including development of solutions for the long-term reliability of groundwater, is the cornerstone of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,” said DWR Director Karla Nemeth. “DWR’s evaluation and assessment of groundwater sustainability plans is an important step in the long process of bringing our critical groundwater basins into sustainability, helping to ensure Californians have a reliable water source during drought years and for generations to come.”
 
DWR is releasing plan assessments as they are completed, rather than waiting to release the assessments at the end of the two-year review period in January 2022, to provide early feedback and guidance that can inform other GSAs as they develop their plans.
 
SGMA initiated a new era of local groundwater management. For the first time in California’s water history, local agencies and groundwater users are required to form GSAs and develop and implement plans to guide how they will achieve groundwater basin sustainability goals over the next 20 years. SGMA lays out a process designed for continuous improvement – gathering information to fill data gaps, updating plans, and promoting science-based adaptation. Plans will be updated as new information becomes available and as conditions change in groundwater basins. DWR will review annual reports and also assess each plan every five years to determine if the GSAs are on track to meet their basin’s goal.
 
Despite the long-term timeline, SGMA requires near-term actions that will help the state manage water resources during dry and drought years. For example, GSAs have been required to submit annual progress reports since 2020 with the most up-to-date monitoring and plan implementation information for their groundwater basins, including groundwater levels and use. This data can be accessed on the SGMA Portal. By tracking conditions and implementation performance, the state and local agencies can better manage water resources during average and wet years to ensure groundwater will be available as a buffer during dry years.
 
In addition to and aligned with plan evaluation, DWR continues to support GSAs by providing planning, technical and financial assistance. Recently, DWR announced $26 million in grant funding for project investments to improve water supply security, water quality and the reliability of groundwater. These efforts align with the Administration’s budget proposal for significant additional funding for projects to improve groundwater conditions and advance safe drinking water efforts for groundwater-dependent communities.
 
For more information about DWR’s available assistance, watch this video and visit the assistance and engagement webpage.
 
Additional information, including a video message from DWR on the assessments, is available at this website.

How ‘sustainable’ is California’s groundwater sustainability act?

From High Country News:

Beneath the almond and citrus fields of the San Joaquin Valley lies an enormous system of aquifers that feeds some of the world’s most productive farmland. Hundreds of miles north and east, along the Nevada border, is the Surprise Valley, a remote, high-desert region undergirded by cone-shaped hollows of sediment that hold deposits of water. Both of these water systems, along with every other groundwater basin in California — a whopping 515 entities — must create individually tailored plans to manage their water use more sustainably. In scale and ambition, California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) has few parallels. And the work becomes increasingly urgent as the climate crisis makes water shortages increasingly severe.

Passed in 2014, SGMA is a complicated law that addresses what appears to be a straightforward problem: California doesn’t have enough groundwater. For decades, water users have taken out more than they put back in, with little statewide oversight. SGMA changes all that by drawing boundaries around the state’s groundwater basins (some, but not all, had been already defined and locally regulated) and requiring each one to create a local regulatory body and its own sustainability plan. These agencies must work with myriad stakeholders — public water systems, Indigenous nations, domestic and municipal well users and historically disadvantaged communities, as well as the ecosystems themselves.

Click here to continue reading this article from the High Country News.

Analysis of 31 GSPs in Critically Overdrafted Basins

One of the key criteria that the Department of Water Resources (DWR) must consider when evaluating whether a GSP is likely to achieve the sustainability goal for the basin is “Whether the interests of the beneficial uses and users of groundwater in the basin, and the land uses and property interests potentially affected by the use of groundwater in the basin, have been considered” (23 California Code of Regulations [CCR] § 355.4(b)(4)).

In regard to this and other statutory requirements to consider and address the needs of all beneficial users in GSPs, a group of NGOs, with the support of Water Foundation, collectively reviewed 31 GSPs in 16 critically overdrafted basins and subbasins.

The organizations collectively submitted detailed formal comment letters to each GSA on the public draft GSPs as well as detailed formal comment letters to DWR on the final GSP documents, within the formal public review period.

The reviews were prioritized towards those GSPs that were considered to be of high priority by our organizations due to the presence of: (1) small drinking water systems, (2) groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs), and (3) DACs. Prioritization also considered coverage and interest by the respective organizations, with the goal of selecting at least one GSP per critically overdrafted basin.

Although we did not review all 46 submitted GSPs, the findings from our analysis are both valuable to inform GSP implementation and updates in critically overdrafted basins, and to inform the development and review of GSPs currently being drafted for the remaining high- and medium-priority basins. For each of the five key elements, the following sections discuss: (1) the regulatory basis for consideration of beneficial users, (2) a summary of our review findings, (3) a discussion of how the GSPs should have more adequately addressed the key issues, and (4) a selection of “Model GSP Elements” from reviewed GSPs.

It is the goal of this analysis to share our findings in order to help inform and improve the development of GSPs for non-critically overdrafted basins, as well as to inform opportunities for improvement of GSPs for critically overdrafted basins.

For more analysis on the 2020 GSPs, visit the 2020 GSP page at the Groundwater Exchange.

New report identifies major gaps in SGMA, provides recommendations

“In 2014, California’s landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) promised comprehensive management of California’s groundwater. The report, based on joint analysis by Stanford University’s Water in the West and The Nature Conservancy, finds that SGMA actually suffers from several major gaps in its coverage.

Indeed, SGMA currently protects less than two percent of California’s groundwater. While SGMA covers those groundwater basins where the vast majority of pumping today occurs, it does not protect many other important groundwater sources, leaving that groundwater at risk of over-pumping, now and in the future, with no state oversight to safeguard rural domestic wells, sensitive habitats, and other beneficial uses of water. 

This report, Mind the Gaps: The Case for Truly Comprehensive Sustainable Groundwater Management, details SGMA’s gaps and their consequences and recommends several ways to remedy these gaps. The gaps largely stem from the ways in which the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) defines and prioritizes groundwater basins in Bulletin 118 (California’s Groundwater). … ”

Read the report here: Mind the Gaps: The Case for Truly Comprehensive Sustainable Groundwater Management

California regions submitted their first Groundwater Sustainability Plans in 2020. How did they do?

” … With support from the Water Foundation, a collaborative effort among California nonprofits and community groups has been leading statewide advocacy to ensure public agencies and elected officials implement the legislation fairly, effectively, and equitably.

This month, the group marked an important milestone.  Over the past year, researchers and advocates at Ag Innovations, Audubon California, Clean Water Fund, Local Government Commission, The Nature Conservancy, and Union of Concerned Scientists, among others, have been pouring over thousands upon thousands of pages of local groundwater sustainability plans.  While often hard to decipher and full of technical jargon, these plans reveal more about California’s groundwater health than we’ve ever seen publicly available before. … ”

Continue reading at the Water Foundation here:  California Regions Submitted Their First Groundwater Sustainability Plans in 2020. How Did They Do?

The Basin Characterization Model—A Regional Water Balance Software Package

This report documents the computer software package, Basin Characterization Model, version 8 (BCMv8)—a monthly, gridded, regional water-balance model—and provides detailed operational instructions and example applications. After several years of many applications and uses of a previous version, CA-BCM, published in 2014, the BCMv8 was refined to improve the accuracy of the water-balance components, particularly the recharge estimate, which is the most difficult to accurately assess.

The improvement of the various water-balance components targeted the actual evapotranspiration component, which, in turn, reduced the uncertainty of the recharge estimate. The improvement of this component was enabled by the availability of a national, gridded actual-evapotranspiration product from the U.S. Geological Survey that was unique in its scope to combine remotely sensed spatial variability and ground-based long-term water-balance constraints.

This dataset provided the ability to assess monthly actual evapotranspiration for 62 vegetation types and to perform regional calibration in watersheds throughout California with the objective of closing the water balance using improved estimates for each component. The refinements, including vegetation-specific evapotranspiration, enabled the development of applications that could explore various aspects of landscape disturbance, such as wildfire, forest management, or urbanization.

The improvements to BCMv8 also provided the ability to assess long-term sustainability of water resources under a variety of management applications or future climate projections.

For more information, click here.

Finding a balance between supply and demand to get to groundwater sustainability

From the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC):

“The San Joaquin Valley has begun to grapple with implementing the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Figuring out the math of balancing water supply and demand in ways that cause the least economic harm to farmers and local economies is challenging, and difficult tradeoffs are inevitable. We talked with Emmy Cattani, a fifth-generation farmer from Kern County, about some options.

PPIC: Talk about ways that agriculture can reduce land fallowing in implementing SGMA.

EMMY CATTANI: More supply is critical. The biggest opportunity is to figure out how to capture water in big flood events, which are expected to become more common with climate change. … ”

Continue reading at the PPIC here: Finding a balance between supply and demand to get to groundwater sustainability