Californias groundwater law will get governors OK Tuesday By Lisa M. Krieger lkrieger@mercurynews Posted: 09/16/2014 06:12:00 AM PDT0 Comments Updated: 09/16/2014 06:12:36 AM PDT Gov. Jerry Brown will sign a landmark measure Tuesday to regulate groundwater pumping, enacting the most significant California water law in nearly 50 years. The legislation would require local government officials to bring their groundwater basins up to sustainable levels. Local agencies would be required to regularly measure water tables and set goals so that only as much water is taken out as is naturally replenished. Decades of intense pumping have dropped water tables dangerously low in places such as the San Joaquin Valley. Scientific studies show the ground is sinking in many hard-hit areas. But the law will take years to implement. Agencies in the most over-pumped basins will be required to submit plans to the state by January 2020. It could be decades, experts say, before the most depleted groundwater basins are replenished. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, and Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, is designed to halt over-pumping by directing local public agencies to establish groundwater entities that will develop management plans. If local agencies dont take action, the State Water Resources Control Board can step in and do it. The basic philosophy of this approach is the idea that you give local agencies the authority that they need to be able to do that -- monitoring, getting access to records and the ability to regulate pumping, if they need to, said Ellen Hanak of the Public Policy Institute of California. And then you have a state backstop, she said. If local agencies are given authority but dont use it, there is the possibility that the state can do it for them, or compel them to do it. Brown and Democratic legislative leaders backed the proposal, but Republicans and Central Valley Democrats argued it was too sweeping and would hurt farmers already struggling amid the ongoing drought. Farmers blamed cuts in surface water deliveries for the increased reliance on groundwater. A solution is definitely needed, but these bills do not provide the right tools for a comprehensive solution, said Cannon Michael of Bowles Farming Co. in Los Banos.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 18:56:16 +0000