By Don A. Wright
A study conducted by California State University researchers looks at how aware San Joaquin Valley farmers are of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) and its administration. The Water And Valley Economy, WAVE study was funded by the CSU Agricultural Research Institute as well as cash and in-kind contributions from private enterprises. The study was led by CSU-WATER, Water Advocacy Towards
Education & Research and includes faculty, staff and students from Fresno State, Chico State and volunteer collaborators from ag related businesses cooperatively conducted the study over the past year. You can access an presentation of the survey on YouTube here.
The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act was passed in 2014 and created an entirely new layer of government. It divided the San Joaquin Valley into hydrologic subbasins and required all land within those subbasins form Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSA) by 2017. Each of the GSAs within the subbasins were required to write a coordinated Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) by 2020. This GSP is meant to bring the subbasins into a condition of groundwater balance by the year 2040. 
One of the requirements in SGMA is for the GSAs to perform outreach to the people within its boundaries. For many in the ag irrigation community SGMA is now an acronym as familiar as NASA. It’s the first major change in water law in a century. But for many growers and businesses in the Valley SGMA is just another undefined government program or they’re not even aware of its existence. Yet the implementation of SGMA could so reduce water availability that farms may be forced to permanently fallow one million acres in the Valley. 
Study Area
The study area spanned five counties – Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern, 12 subbasins and more than 60 GSAs. The survey was conducted in English, Spanish and Punjabi and was begun in October of 2023. Almost 300 complete responses were received.
Survey Questions
The WAVE Study was headed by Dr. Steve Blumenshine, CSU-WATER and Dr. Anita Chaudhry, CSU-Chico with input from Dr. Dean Fairbanks, CSU-Chico.
The survey portion of the study focused on five questions and five factors to determine farmer engagement. The questions included:
- Were the respondents aware of SMGA and participate in SGMA-related events?
- Are their interests well represented in the GSA?
- What are their perceptions of SGMA’s impacts?
- Was the process of SGMA implementation fair?
- What sources of information do farmers use and trust?
The respondents were categorized by their reliance on groundwater in dry and wet years, if their land was within an irrigation or water district, which subbasin and county, the size of the farm and crop types and their education, age and if they also work outside of agriculture.
Results
WAVE Study results were reviewed during a recent webinar. Dr. Chaudhry presented the survey’s main results saying most respondents had heard of SGMA but a third had not attended any SGMA related event.
The majority believed participation is important but for logistical reasons didn’t attend and didn’t feel represented by their GSA.
The responses were mixed when asked about whether they felt their interests were represented by their GSA. Some believed they received poor representation due to divergent interests in the subbasin, a lack of trust amongst farmers and the GSA boards and not receiving coherent information.
The majority of respondents were pessimistic about the effect of SGMA, with the rest either unsure or in some cases optimistic.
Up to 70-percent agreed the process of engaging all farmers was not fair.
Up to 60-percent of respondents reported they don’t have adequate information about SGMA.
These information sources differed amongst farmers, some stating they get their information from their Irrigation Districts, the GSAs themselves or neighbors and the local community. However, they all agreed the Department of Water Resources, the State Water Resources Control Board and their counties are not primary sources of information for farmers.
The study found there was a slightly higher response from owners and managers of larger farms, orchards and vineyards relative to the target population. The county wide distribution of survey responses matched the 2022 Ag Census conducted by the US Department of Agriculture.
Responses were received from all subbasins but eight percent marked “I don’t know” when asked which subbasin they were located in. Most respondents were inside an irrigation or water district.
The largest reason given for not participating in SGMA events was they didn’t know about the event soon enough. The least reason was they didn’t know anyone in the GSA.
The responses about quality of representation ranged from “farmers like me” are not well represented to “don’t need to attend because I’m well represented.” Only one percent felt the GSA meetings are not relevant.
Farmers also working outside of agriculture and farmers growing on less than 180 acres were less likely to participate in SGMA events. While farmers relying more on groundwater were more likely to participate. About half of the respondents who reported not attending a GSA/SGMA event listed logistical barriers prevented them from participating. Such as not learning about the event in time or the location was too inconvenient. 
Seventy percent of respondents believed participation of all farmers in their GSAs is essential to achieving groundwater sustainability while 55 percent believed all the farmers in their subbasin have been involved in the SGMA process.
When asked 32 percent felt poorly represented in their GSA, 25 percent were neutral, 26 percent felt well represented and 17 percent were unsure.
The top reasons for pessimism over SGMA are: stakeholders have too many diverse interests, the SGMA timeline is too short, groundwater users are not knowledgeable about groundwater, lack of trust between stakeholders, the GSAs don’t have the financial resources and not enough monitoring and extraction data.
There was more pessimism about SGMA’s impacts on irrigation supplies, farmers’ financial performance and the market value of farmland in both the short and long run.
Conclusions
GSAs need more two-way communication with the broader community to build trust and representation. All agencies need to think beyond a universal, single factor vulnerability to SGMA and avoid the trap of what gets measured gets managed. Groundwater dependence as it impacts the total irrigation supply isn’t as well known as it should be.
Overall, the WAVE Study is a first look at how the SGMA process is perceived by those who live and work with water supply uncertainty in the San Joaquin Valley.
Further Observations
Part of the problem of awareness comes from how SGMA was written. Tasking the GSAs to conduct the outreach greatly limited the scope of outreach while complicating the heavy lift of writing a GSP.
For example, if a subbasin has six GSAs with limited geographical areas to reach, that adds six communication requirements to what is largely an engineering and planning task. The state isn’t paying for the cost of writing the GSP, it is self-funded by farmers. The GSA board members must be good stewards of these funds and it would be irresponsible for them to pay for outreach beyond the GSA boundaries.
The GSPs are mostly written by hydrologic engineers and attorneys and they cost millions of dollars to produce. The outreach component ends up being written by technical specialists. While they are extremely skilled in hydrology, computer modeling and legal procedure – public relations and marketing are not something they usually deal with.
In many instances Non-Government Organizations, NGOs, received grant money to conduct outreach to disadvantaged communities, DACs. Although not included in the WAVE Study there is empirical evidence few DAC residents attended SGMA events. By that metric the NGO efforts have proven a nonviable method of outreach.
In retrospect, had SGMA made the outreach component subbasin wide, all of the GSAs could contribute to a larger outreach effort increasing the economy of scale and effectiveness.
Since implementing SGMA has never been done before there are no precedents or experiences to draw from. It will be very important for everyone – farmers, GSAs, state agencies – to remember there may be many more 20/20 hindsight visions of how SGMA could have been better written and be willing to be flexible and work together. That goes especially for the state since they have the regulatory power.
Note: In addition to Risk Mitigators & Advisors and Umida Agriculture WaterWrights.net has donated in-kind contributions to this study.
For more information contact: Dr. Steve Blumenshine at sblumens@mail.fresnostate.edu
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