Groundwater Sustainability Agencies meet in Sonoma March 27

The Groundwater Sustainability Agencies mandated by the 2014 state Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) are supposed to be in place by the end of June this year, and time is running out.

So a series of community meetings are scheduled to update the community on the creation of the three new Groundwater Sustainability Agencies, or GSAs, which are to be tasked with implementing California’s new groundwater law locally.

Even though groundwater is the most common resource tied to agriculture, it was completely unregulated – no required meters on wells or even tracking of groundwater use – until September 2014 with the passage of the SGMA.

The first requirement of the SGMA is the creation of these regulatory bodies, responsible for developing and implementing plans to sustainably manage groundwater by 2042. Though “

Well owners and water districts are most directly affected by the management of a GSA, which has the ability to regulate groundwater use and levy fees on commercial users. Wells that are solely for residential use, and that use less than two acre-feet per year (about 893 gallons a day on average), “cannot be metered, although the groundwater users are still subject to fees,” clarified Ann DuBay of the Sonoma County Water Agencies.

The three groundwater basins in Sonoma County affected by the SGMA are the Santa Rosa Plain, Petaluma Valley and the Sonoma Valley. In the Sonoma Valley Basin, the eligible agencies include the City of Sonoma, the Valley of the Moon Water District, the North Bay Water District, Sonoma County and the county Water Agency, and the Sonoma Resource Conservation District.

The meeting in Sonoma will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Monday, March 27, at the Sonoma Charter School Multi-Purpose Room, 17202 Sonoma Highway. (The Petaluma Valley meeting was on March 23, the Santa Rosa Plan meeting will be on April 3.)

The meeting will include a brief overview of SGMA requirements, followed by a description of the recommended governance structure of the proposed new Groundwater Sustainability Agencies. Staff representatives from the entities eligible to serve as GSAs have been working since 2015 on recommendations to their governing bodies regarding these new agencies.

In April and May, the governing boards of the GSA-eligible entities will be making final decisions, accompanied by another round of public hearings on the proposed structure of the GSAs, to be held in each area in May or June.

The deadline for forming GSAs is June 30, 2017. If local agencies fail to create GSAs, the state will step in to manage groundwater in the three basins. For more information, visit sonomagroundwater.org.