A Guidebook for using California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act to protect fisheries
From the Center on Urban Environmental Law at Golden Gate University:
“In California, surface waters have historically been regulated as if they were unconnected to groundwater. Yet, in reality, surface waters and groundwater are often hydrologically connected. Many of the rivers that support fisheries such as salmon and trout are hydrologically dependent on tributary groundwater to maintain instream flow. This means that when there is intensive pumping of tributary groundwater the result can be reductions in instream flow and damage to fisheries.
For this reason, stakeholders concerned about adequate instream flows for fisheries in California’s rivers, streams and creeks need to be effectively engaged in the implementation of California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). …
Each SGMA Groundwater Plan must detail how the groundwater basin will be managed to avoid overdraft conditions and, importantly for fisheries, to avoid adverse impacts on hydrologically connected surface waters.
Although groundwater sustainability agencies and fishery stakeholders recognize that the groundwater-surface water connection needs to be addressed in SGMA Groundwater Plans, at present there is limited guidance on how to do this. That is, what are the specific types of information, modeling, monitoring, and pumping provisions that should be included in SGMA Groundwater Plans to ensure that groundwater extraction does not cause significant adverse impacts on fisheries? The purpose of this guidebook is to provide such guidance.”