Groundwater Sustainability Plan Development – Page 2

What’s next for the community of Borrego Springs and the future of Borrego’s water and land-use planning?

Borrego Springs – Southern California, but a World Apart

A four part series from the Local Government Commission

“Amidst drought, groundwater regulation, and economic hardship, the media portrays Borrego Springs as a village “drying up” in the desert – running out of water – soon to be the next California ghost town.

Like many aspects of the desert, there’s more to the Borrego Springs community than meets the eye. In the crevices of the valley’s rocky floor, wildflowers blossom in exuberant hope. In the shade of the Palo Verde trees, Coyote Creek babbles through the sandy slopes with perseverance.

From corner to corner, the community is banding together: evaluating how to live within the constraints of this remote locale, charting a course that integrates civic engagement with environmental, social and economic priorities – to achieve their goal of a thriving, resilient future.

This is their story. … ”

Read more from the Local Government Commission here: Borrego Springs – Southern California, but a World Apart

Saving Borrego’s Lifeblood

“Borrego Springs’ only viable water source is a large aquifer under Borrego Valley; it has long been accepted that the aquifer’s water collected over millennia and is being pumped at a rapid pace by recent generations. What farmers, developers, business owners, and residents never agreed upon was how much water was actually available, and how long it would last.”

Read more from the Local Government Commission here: Saving Borrego’s Lifeblood

Community Voices

“LGC, with the help of five Stanford University students, conducted interviews with community members to understand varying perspectives and identify where community visions overlap in order to help guide the community on a path forward. Ten Borregans lent their voices to these interviews, including full-time residents, commuters, and weekenders.”

Read more from the Local Government Commission here: Community Voices

Borrego’s Path to Resilience in the Face of Change

“As a new year begins, Borrego Springs is eager for opportunities to ensure community resilience while protecting the local economy and the region’s precious ecosystems. In the face of many obstacles, not all hope is lost. This article wraps up the four-part series, highlighting the revitalization of the Borrego Valley Stewardship Council and their efforts to pave the way for a brighter future.”

Read more from the Local Government Commission here: Borrego’s Path to Resilience in the Face of Change

IMAGE CREDIT: Photo of Borrego Springs by Jim Mullhaupt

How water justice groups view groundwater sustainability planning

Over-pumping of groundwater has caused domestic wells to go dry in the San Joaquin Valley. Yet many of the first round of plans prepared to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) do not yet propose ways to address this problem. We explored groundwater planning with three members of the environmental justice community—Angela Islas of Self-Help Enterprises, Justine Massey of the Community Water Center, and Amanda Monaco of the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability.

Click here to read this article.

Consultants share their top 10 lessons learned from 5 years of SGMA implementation

From Montgomery & Associates:

“California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) is a complex program with a new language that must be mastered by consultants, basin managers, and stakeholders alike. When California first embarked upon the SGMA journey five years ago, there was a lot of trepidation about implementing this bold and untested groundwater management program.

M&A’s SGMA team has worked on 13 Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs), including three GSPs submitted in January 2020. It hasn’t always been easy, and there have been plenty of bumps along the way, but we’ve learned a lot in those five years, and we are happy to share some of what we learned. … ”

Click here to read this article from Montgomery & Associates.

Research Briefs: CA Farmer Perspectives on Groundwater Management

From the Water Foundation:

“Producing food requires large water resources, and in California, thousands of farms are mostly or solely reliant on groundwater sources. While farmers are integral stakeholders in sustainable groundwater management, the perceptions of individual farmers regarding water policy and management are not well understood.

Food system and natural resources researchers at the University of Vermont surveyed Yolo County farmers in 2017 to understand their perspectives on SGMA, water management practices, and policy preferences. In 2019, with support from the Water Foundation, Meredith Niles at the University of Vermont and Courtney Hammond Wagner at Stanford University expanded their survey and analysis to farmers in Fresno, Madera, and San Luis Obispo counties, in partnership with local county farm bureaus.

Together, these four county-level surveys of 690 farmers revealed many similarities in farmers’ perspectives, despite agricultural and sociocultural differences. … ”

Click here to continue reading at the Water Foundation.

See also: To Achieve Sustainable Groundwater Management, CA Needs a Bigger, Inclusive Table, commentary by Alesandra Nájera and Mike Myatt

GSA SUMMIT: Setting Sustainable Management Criteria: It’s easy, isn’t it?

The details of how a groundwater sustainability plan will be implemented are defined by the setting of sustainable management criteria (or SMC). With several undesirable results to consider, a range of technical analyses to perform, data gaps yet to be filled, and potentially conflicting stakeholder interests, the process to establish sustainable management criteria is often involved and challenging.

At the Groundwater Resources Association’s 3rd annual GSA Summit, a panel reviewed how the process went for the groundwater sustainability plans that were submitted to the Department of Water Resources earlier this year, focusing on four of the six sustainable management criteria: water levels, water quality, land subsidence, and interconnected surface waters.

Click here to read this article at Maven’s Notebook.

GSA SUMMIT: Lessons learned from the 2020 GSPs: Perspectives from the critically overdrafted basins

The implementation phase of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act has now begun for the basins designated as critically-overdrafted. Getting to this point has been an unparalleled journey as communities, farmers, water suppliers, and others navigated through uncharted territory to develop local solutions for sustainable groundwater management. At the Groundwater Resources Association Third Annual Groundwater Sustainability Agency Summit held online in June, a panel of managers from four of the critically overdrafted basins reflected on the hard work of developing and adopting a groundwater sustainability plan.

Seated on the panel were Gary Petersen from the Salinas Valley Basin GSA; Eric Osterling from the Mid Kaweah GSA; Deanna Jackson from TriCounty GSA; and Patricia Poire from the Kern Groundwater Authority. Collectively, these GSAs are having to deal with all six of the undesirable results, from subsidence to groundwater levels to seawater intrusion, and they overly five of the 21 critically overdrafted basins.

Each panelist then discussed the process that they went through in developing their plans, the lessons they learned, and their advice for those developing the plans that will be due in January of 2022.

Click here to read this article.

GSA SUMMIT: Reflections on the 2020 GSP process

At the end of January of this year, the state’s critically overdrafted groundwater basins submitted their adopted groundwater sustainability plans (or GSPs), meeting an important deadline in the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act; the remaining basins subject to SGMA will be submitting their plans in January of 2022. The Department of Water Resources will now have two years to review the plans to determine their adequacy.

At the Third Annual GSA Summit, Craig Altare, chief of the Groundwater Sustainability Plan section at the Department of Water Resources’ Sustainable Groundwater Management Office or SGMO, reflected on the GSPs and how the implementation of SGMA is playing out.

Click here to read this article at Maven’s Notebook.

SGMA IMPLEMENTATION: Borrego Valley’s strategy for a negotiated resolution under SGMA

Presentation at the California Irrigation Institute conference highlights this critically-overdrafted basin’s creative approach to meeting the requirements of SGMA

The Borrego Valley is a small valley in the northeastern part of San Diego County, about 60 miles northeast of San Diego. Groundwater is the sole source of water supply for the valley; there isn’t any surface water or imported water available. After decades of excessive pumping, the Borrego Groundwater Basin is considered critically-over drafted and dramatic reductions in pumping – up to 70% by the latest estimate – will be needed to reach sustainability.

The town of Borrego Springs is small – about 3500 folks. Tourism is a major industry in for the area, which is a popular destination in the winter months for ‘snow birds’ coming from colder climates to enjoy the mild temperatures. Borrego Valley has four public golf courses, a tennis center, and horseback riding, as well as being surrounded by the Anza-Borrego State Park. About 30% of the land use is agriculture, mainly tree and citrus farms.

After the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014, the Borrego Valley GSA was formed and work began on the development of a Groundwater Sustainability Plan with the goal of meeting the January 30, 2020 deadline for critically-drafted basins to develop and adopt a GSP. However, unable to reach agreement, the basin has decided to take a different route to meet the requirements of SGMA.

At the 2020 California Irrigation Institute conference held in January of this year, Michele Staples, a shareholder in the Irvine office of Jackson Tidus, gave a presentation on the creative way the basin came up with complying and implementing SGMA.

Click here to read this article at Maven’s Notebook.

One area in California will tap regional planning to respond to the state’s groundwater law. Here’s how it could help farmers.

Now that critically overdrafted groundwater basins in the Central Valley have submitted their sustainability plans, the hard work begins for them to balance groundwater supply and demand in ways that minimize economic disruption.

A state program called Regional Conservation Investment Strategies (RCIS) can help.

RCIS wasn’t created to help groundwater basins comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Rather, it was established in 2016 as a framework for regions to prioritize and develop measurable habitat conservation outcomes including those needed to adapt to climate change.

This week, however, the Kaweah Subbasin was awarded $515,000 from the state’s Wildlife Conservation Board to develop an RCIS plan, becoming the first region in the Central Valley to leverage the process in response to SGMA.

Click here to read this report at EDF’s Growing Returns blog.

Groundwater: Deadline nears for completion of local plans

“With roughly two and a half months remaining before a state-mandated deadline, local agencies overseeing critically overdrafted groundwater basins are working to finalize sustainability plans as required by a 2014 state law.

The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA, requires local groundwater sustainability agencies in critically overdrafted basins to submit their plans by next Jan. 31. The plans must describe how local agencies will achieve groundwater sustainability by 2040, and should include measurable objectives and milestones in five-year increments. … ”

Continue reading at Ag Alert by clicking here.