California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act – From the Back Seat to the Driver Seat in the (Inter)National Groundwater Sustainability Movement

Abstract

California’s geography and Mediterranean, semi-arid climate has attracted both a burgeoning population and one of the largest irrigated agricultural developments in the world. Water resources are important to the livelihood of the state. With dry summers and highly variable annual winter precipitation, groundwater is a critical resource, drought buffer, and long-term storage reservoir for the state. Only during the most recent five-year drought, California adopted statutory control of groundwater resources: in 2014, the legislature passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). The law is the most significant California water law reform since the legislature took statutory control of surface water rights in 1914 and of water quality in 1969. This chapter provides an overview of groundwater management during the state’s 150-year history, with often uncontrolled groundwater development, with conflict resolution and groundwater adjudications through the courts in some areas, and continued groundwater overdraft in others. Where courts have set limits on groundwater extraction, the objective has been to ensure stable and reliable groundwater level dynamics to avoid well outages, land subsidence, and seawater intrusion. Shortages are shared in sometimes complicated arrangements among overlying users and prior appropriators of groundwater. Under SGMA, groundwater management decisions will be made at the local level, with state oversight, to achieve long-term sustainability. We explore SGMA’s vision for sustainability, stakeholder engagement, technical-scientific assessment, planning, and infrastructure practices. We also describe the role of state enforcement as a key driver for successful implementation of local groundwater sustainability plans. Importantly, local groundwater management, for the first time, will also need to consider groundwater pumping effects on surface water, on groundwater-dependent ecosystems, and on water quality. Hence, key challenges facing local groundwater management agencies also arise from needing to address overlapping and potentially competing and less well-defined legal doctrines and federal and state laws pertaining surface water rights, ecosystems, and water quality.