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Another View on AB 2201 August 30, 2022

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By Louise Lampara

Assemblymember Steve Bennett’s proposed bill, AB2201, would create a new permanent permitting process for groundwater wells that negatively impacts local water districts, municipalities, and California’s agricultural community.

Even with recent amendments to the bill language, AB2201 would force a strict new mandate on how groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) must operate. The bill dictates how GSAs must manage their own groundwater basins and removes the ability of locally based experts at the GSAs to decide for themselves what management options best address local conditions. Instead, the bill would require local GSAs to make specific findings and determinations for new and modified groundwater wells before these wells may be allowed.

The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was passed in 2014. At its very core, SGMA recognized that it is critical for water issues to be managed and resolved at the local level. When he signed SGMA into law, then Governor Jerry Brown stated, “Groundwater management in California is best accomplished locally.” SGMA achieves this, in large part, by requiring the development of individual local basin groundwater sustainability plans to identify the challenges and solutions that are unique to each local groundwater basin.

As a Ventura County Supervisor, Assemblymember Bennett supported robust local groundwater management. He was instrumental in the adoption of Ventura County Well Ordinance No. 4468. This local ordinance established policies to ensure that wells are “executed, operated and destroyed in such a manner that the groundwater will not be contaminated or polluted, and that water obtained from the water wells will be suitable for use and will not jeopardize the health, safety or welfare of the community in Ventura County.”

But now, through AB 2201, Assemblymember Bennett has completely disregarded the importance of local management and local expertise in favor of a “one size fits all” statewide authority, adding yet another layer of bureaucratic red tape to an already arduous process.

Only three months ago, Governor Gavin Newsom enacted Executive Order N-7-22 to protect health, safety, and the environment during the current drought emergency. Executive Order N-7-22 directs local agencies to work collaboratively with local GSAs when considering new and altered well requests. Under this Executive Order, public agencies cannot approve a permit for a new groundwater well (or for alteration of an existing well) in medium- or high-priority basins subject to SGMA without first obtaining written verification from the local GSA that the proposed well would not negatively impact the sustainability goal for that specific basin.

AB2201 would codify – and complicate – the directives of the Governor’s Executive Order.

As I write this editorial, over 80 representatives from a broad range of sectors and geographic areas within the state, each with expertise in well permitting, design, construction, maintenance, and destruction, are currently revising and updating the state’s well standards to ensure the protection of California’s groundwater quality. At the same time, municipalities, water users, and GSAs are actively working through the challenges of implementing the Executive Order’s directives.

We must allow our local community experts the time and opportunity to work through the Executive Order and the upcoming changes to the state’s well standards to determine how these requirements will be implemented in their own local basins before the state legislature complicates the process by permanently reducing the local control guaranteed in SGMA.

Without allowing an opportunity for local GSAs and communities to work through how to best implement the Governor’s Order, the bill only creates more confusion in the already complicated process for sustainable management of local groundwater basins. Well applicants would face significant new costs. Counties and GSAs would be exposed to increased threats of legal challenges for well permitting decisions.

Additionally, AB2201 will not increase water accessibility for small, impoverished communities. By adding substantial permitting and reporting requirements, AB2201’s adds cost-prohibitive burdens to smaller communities, making it more, not less, difficult for these communities to provide water to their residents.

AB2201 devalues existing state statutes that already provide for local regulatory authority over well construction and maintenance and erodes the intent of SGMA. The bill takes well-permitting decisions out of the hands of local experts and drops it in the lap of politically appointed representatives with little, if any, expertise in groundwater management and even less local community knowledge.

We must maintain local management of groundwater and sustainability planning (including permitting and enforcement), as intended by SGMA and other state statutes. Local county agencies and water districts understand their communities’ needs. They have the technical expertise and knowledge necessary to make the critical decisions to ensure groundwater sustainability in collaboration with local GSAs.

Sacramento legislators need to entrust groundwater management to the local experts.

Louise Lampara is the Executive Director of the Ventura County Coalition of Labor Agriculture and Business, www.colabvc.org She can be reached at llampara@colabvc.org

 

 

 

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