San Bernardino County government next week will surrender its authority over safeguarding eleven of the water tables below the surface of the land within the county’s boundaries, delivering that responsibility to the State Water Board or local agencies the state designates.
The action is being taken in compliance with the requirements and provisions of the California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
Effective as of January 1, 2015, the California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act called for local water and land use agencies to take measures to govern the use of water within 127 groundwater basins and sub-basins or basins throughout the state that have been designated by the California Department of Water Resources as medium or high priority. The act mandates that steps be taken to ensure those water supplies are not dried up by profligate drafting of water or overuse and that a groundwater sustainability agency be formed for each of the basins by June 30, 2017. Each agency has the responsibility of developing and implementing a groundwater sustainability plan for that particular basin.
Eighteen of the 127 medium/high priority basins in California underlie San Bernardino County; eleven are adjudicated and therefore exempt from groundwater sustainability agency/groundwater sustainability plan requirements. However, each adjudicated basin contains “fringe areas” that lie outside of the adjudicated area but within the official basin boundary established by the California Department of Water Resources. These fringe areas are subject to the groundwater sustainability agency/groundwater sustainability plan requirement unless they are included within an alternative plan covering the entire basin.
Local agencies were permitted, in lieu of a groundwater sustainability plan, to have submitted by January 1, 2017 an alternative plan to the California Department of Water Resources for approval.
Any portion of the medium/high priority basins in the county not managed by a groundwater sustainability agency or alternative plan, including fringe areas of adjudicated basins, are “presumed” under the California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act to be under the management of the county. The county may “opt out” of this role by providing notification to the state by June 30, 2017.
Accordingly, the county board of supervisors next week is set to vote on adopting a resolution that authorizes notification of the California Department of Water Resources that pursuant to California Water Code section 10724(b) the county will not be the groundwater sustainability agency for the San Gabriel Valley Basin, the Mission Creek Sub-Basin, the San Gorgonio Pass Sub-Basin, the Coastal Plain of Orange County Basin, the Cucamonga Sub-Basin, the Riverside-Arlington Sub-Basin, the Rialto-Colton Sub-Basin, the Bunker Hill Sub-Basin, the Yucaipa Sub-Basin, the San Timoteo Sub-Basin and the Bear Valley Basin.
A tool in the effort to reduce water use is the levying of fees on pumpers of more than two acre-feet per year.