Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)

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Public Draft Groundwater Sustainability Plan for the Santa Ynez River Valley Groundwater Basin, Western Management Area

Western Management Area Groundwater Sustainability Agency | September 1st, 2021

Summary

This Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) is prepared in accordance with the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) and covers the Western Management Area (W

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Putting Adaptive Management into Practice: Incorporating Quantitative Metrics into Sustainable Groundwater Management

Stanford University | March 4th, 2019

Summary

Groundwater is a critical resource in California, serving as a reserve during droughts that are expected to be increasingly frequent and severe as climate change progres

Groundwater is a critical resource in California, serving as a reserve during droughts that are expected to be increasingly frequent and severe as climate change progresses. Adaptive management – revising management practices based on monitoring of progress toward pre-established quantitative metrics of performance – is widely viewed as an effective approach to managing water and other natural resources under conditions of uncertainty. However, linking performance metrics effectively with decision-making processes is often challenging, requiring careful consideration of institutional factors that may limit an agency’s ability to act based on new information. Governance arrangements that enable adaptive management must balance the need for flexibility as conditions change with a preference among water users for stable rules. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) of 2014 – California’s first statewide framework for managing groundwater – incorporates many elements of adaptive management, including requirements to manage groundwater according to quantitative metrics of performance. Under regulations guiding the development of Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs), newly formed Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) must define measurable objectives, minimum thresholds and interim milestones to eliminate six “undesirable results” by 2040 or 2042, depending upon the basin. Yet, the creation of these metrics alone will be insufficient to achieve sustainable management of California’s groundwater; institutional arrangements must support their use to guide management actions. To provide insight into the design and use of metrics as guides to decision-making, this report draws upon the experiences of four special act districts that had authority to manage groundwater prior to SGMA. These include two primarily urban water agencies, Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) and Zone 7 Water Agency (Zone 7) and two agencies with significant pumping for agricultural use, Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency (FCGMA) and Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency (PVWMA). This report analyzes how these agencies used quantitative metrics in their groundwater management plans prior to SGMA and identifies institutional factors that constrained or enabled the adjustment of management actions in response to changing conditions during the 2012-2016 drought. Although the metrics employed by these agencies differ from those required under GSP regulations, these agencies’ experiences still offer important insights for GSAs seeking to develop metrics and integrate them into decision making.

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Recommendations for Sustainable Groundwater Management

California Water Foundation | April 5th, 2014

Summary

The results of this effort are organized and presented as follows in this Report: • A review of the Dialogue process that provides additional details about participati

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Reference Guide to On-Farm Groundwater Recharge on Annual Cropland | Recommendations for Creating Waterbird Habitat Benefits

Nature Conservancy | May 1st, 2019

Summary

With the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) requiring basins to balance water budgets and manage groundwater sustainably, there is an opportunity to demonstr

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Replenishing Groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley

Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) | April 1st, 2018

Summary

The San Joaquin Valley—which has the biggest imbalance between groundwater pumping and replenishment in the state—is ground zero for implementing the 2014 Sustainable

The San Joaquin Valley—which has the biggest imbalance between groundwater pumping and replenishment in the state—is ground zero for implementing the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Expanding groundwater recharge could help local water users bring their basins into balance and make a dent in the long-term deficit of nearly 2 million acre-feet per year. The experience with recharge in 2017?the first wet year since the enactment of SGMA?offers valuable insights in how to expand recharge. A survey of valley water districts’ current recharge efforts revealed strong interest in the practice, and a number of constraints. The following actions are needed to better capitalize on future opportunities: Clarify rules on water available for recharge. The State Water Board needs to develop an expeditious process for enabling water users to capture surface water when it is available. Beyond the legal aspects of establishing rights for diversion and storage, an essential part of this process is technical: developing a simple, rapid way to determine when river flows exceed water required for environmental purposes and downstream users. Evaluate infrastructure capacity. One of the key challenges for expanding recharge is that most available flows are in the northern part of the valley, while most of the overdraft?and best recharge lands?are in the south. In addition, these flows are mainly available for just a few months. A top priority is to evaluate opportunities for improving the use of existing infrastructure (conveyance facilities, surface reservoirs, and recharge basins) and determine where additional investments are warranted. A big bottleneck is likely to be regional conveyance, which is inadequate for capturing and moving high flows to suitable recharge locations. Improve recharge on farmland. Active recharge on farmland may be one of the most promising ways to capture water cost-effectively in wetter years, but it is low relative to its potential. Significantly ramping up this practice will require addressing a suite of technical issues and establishing incentives. Address regulatory barriers. State and federal agencies need to improve processes for approving construction of new recharge projects, moving recharge water through their conveyance facilities, and enabling more flexibility in where water is stored. Water managers and growers also need guidelines from the state for implementing on-farm recharge in ways that are consistent with water quality rules. Strengthen groundwater accounting. Better accounting of water going into and out of groundwater basins is key to sustainable management. It is also needed for developing incentives for growers to recharge, encouraging recharge partnerships, and informing decisions on new investments. Making the most of recharge opportunities will require high levels of cooperation among a wide variety of stakeholders. Local and regional partnerships?for capturing and moving water efficiently, making new investments, and devising projects that bring multiple benefits?are key to helping the region manage this critical resource over the long-term.

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Replenishing Groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley: 2024 Update

Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) | June 6th, 2024

Summary

Strategies to replenish groundwater basins—long used in some areas of the San Joaquin Valley—have increasingly come into focus as the region seeks to bring its overd

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Report of Waste Discharge and Technical Report

Westlands Water District | July 10th, 2019

Summary

This Technical Report is in support of a Report of Waste Discharge (ROWD) for an agricultural aquifer storage and recovery (Ag-ASR) program for Westlands Water District

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Resistivity imaging reveals complex pattern of saltwater intrusion along Monterey coast

Journal of Hydrology (Elsevier) | February 22nd, 2017

Summary

A coastal region represents a dynamic zone where fresh groundwater in the coastal aquifers interacts with saline ocean water. The location of the freshwater-saltwater int

A coastal region represents a dynamic zone where fresh groundwater in the coastal aquifers interacts with saline ocean water. The location of the freshwater-saltwater interface is governed by the density and pressure differences on the two sides of the interface and the subsurface hydrologic properties that control fluid movement. Saltwater intrusion is the process in which this interface moves landward, with saltwater then occupying parts of the aquifer that were once fresh. While this process has been observed and documented throughout the world for over a century (Bear et al., 1999), climate change, growing water demands, and manipulation of natural hydrologic systems have led to saltwater intrusion being considered a significant threat to future freshwater resources globally (Kinzelbach et al., 2003; Barlow and Reichard, 2009; Werner et al., 2013). Saltwater intrusion can have a number of significant economic and environmental impacts, including diminished freshwater storage capacity, contamination of freshwater production wells, soil salinization, and decreased nutrient laden freshwater discharge to marine ecosystems (Johannes, 1980; Taniguchi et al., 2002; Werner et al., 2013). A number of steps can be taken to attempt to slow the rate of saltwater intrusion, including spatial and temporal changes in the extent of groundwater pumping, in landuse, in surface water diversions, and in artificial recharge (Abarca et al., 2006). What is needed however is a way to prioritize these actions, or combinations of actions, so as to optimize the impact on saltwater intrusion. This requires an accurate understanding of the current distribution of freshwater and saltwater, that can be used to predict future locations in response to these, and other, actions (Sanford and Pope, 2009). Saltwater intrusion is traditionally mapped and monitored using measurements made in wells and predictive flow models (Werner et al., 2013). There are a number of limitations with these methods. Measurements made in wells provide point data, which may fail to capture the spatial complexity in subsurface conditions. Improving spatial coverage with additional wells can be cost prohibitive (Ogilvy et al., 2009). Additionally, salinity measurements from wells can be flux-averaged concentrations, and head measurements in wells are affected by the density of the water column so can be misinterpreted in the presence of unknown salt water, and are susceptible to measurement, instrument, and time lag errors (Carrera et al., 2009; Post and Von Asmuth, 2013). Models are generally calibrated by matching historic head values in wells and/or matching salinity values from well samples (Carrera et al., 2009), thus all the limitations of well data are carried over into the model calibration. Given these limitations there is significant opportunity for additional methods of mapping and monitoring the distribution of saltwater in the subsurface for improved management of coastal aquifers.

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Revised Groundwater Sustainability Plan County of Fresno GSA Management Area A & Management Area B Delta-Mendota Subbasin

County of Fresno | July 20th, 2022

Summary

The Delta-Mendota Subbasin (Basin 5-022.07 in the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) Bulletin 118) (Subbasin) is a high priority Subbasin that has been assign

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Rivers that Depend on Aquifers: Drafting SGMA Groundwater Plans with Fisheries in Mind

Golden Gate University (GSU) | April 12th, 2018

Summary

In California, surface waters have historically been regulated as if they were unconnected to groundwater. Yet, in reality, surface waters and groundwater are often hydro

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). Consider the Scott River in Northern California, part of the larger Klamath River Basin. Nearby groundwater contributes to the Scott River. When high volumes of groundwater are extracted from nearby wells, it depletes the Scott River’s instream flow with adverse impacts on salmon and steelhead trout. As discussed further in Section VI of this guidebook, this has led to litigation over the application of California public trust law to groundwater extraction affecting Scott River instream flows, and efforts to use SGMA to ensure that groundwater pumping near the Scott River is compatible with the instream flow needs of fisheries. Situations similar to the Scott River surface and groundwater basin are unfolding throughout California. On a statewide basis, how pervasive is the effect of groundwater pumping on surface water flows? Research by Maurice Hall of the Environmental Defense Fund, utilizing the California Department of Water Resources Central Valley Groundwater Surface Flow Model, provides us with some sense of the magnitude of the problem. In a May 2018 presentation, Hall reported: What the model showed us is that early in the 1900s, 1940s and 1950s, the Sacramento River received a net inflow from the groundwater of something like 1 million acre feet a year…Since that time, the groundwater levels have gone down, and the amount of water that has flowed into the Sacramento River from the surrounding groundwater has gone down accordingly to the point that when we were doing this modeling around 2010, it appeared that on average, the Sacramento River lost just about as much as it gained from the surrounding groundwater in the valley floor. This is the Sacramento River and all of its tributaries upstream of the Sacramento…So the net effect over that period is there was roughly on average 900,000 acre-feet per year less water showing up in the Sacramento River at Sacramento.” (Hall and O’Brien). SGMA was enacted in 2014. Pursuant to SGMA, by June 2017 a groundwater sustainability agency was required to be designated for each groundwater basin in California. Each groundwater sustainability agency in high and medium priority basins must prepare and adopt a Groundwater Sustainability Plan (SGMA Groundwater Plan) by 2020 if the basin is deemed to be in a critical state of overdraft or 2022 for all remaining high and medium priority basins. 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.

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Public Draft Groundwater Sustainability Plan for the Santa Ynez River Valley Groundwater Basin, Western Management Area

Putting Adaptive Management into Practice: Incorporating Quantitative Metrics into Sustainable Groundwater Management

Recommendations for Sustainable Groundwater Management

Reference Guide to On-Farm Groundwater Recharge on Annual Cropland | Recommendations for Creating Waterbird Habitat Benefits

Replenishing Groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley

Replenishing Groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley: 2024 Update

Report of Waste Discharge and Technical Report

Resistivity imaging reveals complex pattern of saltwater intrusion along Monterey coast

Revised Groundwater Sustainability Plan County of Fresno GSA Management Area A & Management Area B Delta-Mendota Subbasin

Rivers that Depend on Aquifers: Drafting SGMA Groundwater Plans with Fisheries in Mind

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