Existing law requires the Department of Water Resources to identify the extent of monitoring of groundwater elevations that is being undertaken within each groundwater basin or subbasin and to prioritize basins or subbasins as high, medium, low, or very low priority, and requires the initial priority for each basin to be established no later than January 31, 2015. Existing law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, requires all groundwater basins designated as high- or medium-priority basins by the department that are designated as basins subject to critical conditions of overdraft to be managed under a groundwater sustainability plan or coordinated groundwater sustainability plans by January 31, 2020, and requires all other groundwater basins designated as high- or medium-priority basins to be managed under a groundwater sustainability plan or coordinated groundwater sustainability plans by January 31, 2022, except as specified. The act requires a local agency, any time the department changes these basin priorities and elevates a basin to a medium- or high-priority basin after January 31, 2015, to either establish a groundwater sustainability agency within 2 years of reprioritization and adopt a groundwater sustainability plan within 5 years of reprioritization, or to submit an alternative to the department that the local agency believes satisfies the objectives of these provisions within 2 years of reprioritization.

This bill would impose the requirement to establish a groundwater sustainability agency or submit an alternative after reprioritization on a local agency or combination of local agencies overlying a groundwater basin.

The act authorizes a groundwater sustainability agency to impose fees to fund the costs of a groundwater sustainability program and requires a groundwater sustainability agency to hold at least one public meeting prior to imposing or increasing a fee. The act requires, at least 10 days prior to the meeting, a groundwater sustainability agency to make available to the public data upon which the proposed fee is based.

This bill would require a groundwater sustainability agency to make the data upon which the proposed fee is based available 20 days prior to the public meeting to impose or increase a fee.

This bill would incorporate changes to Section 10722.4 of the Water Code proposed by both this bill and SB 13, which would become operative only if both bills are enacted and become effective on or before January 1, 2016, and this bill is chaptered last.