This week, the California Water Commission (CWC) met to receive an update on the development of regulations for the quantification and management of the public benefits of water storage projects in order to implement Chapter 8 of Proposition 1.
The initial draft was released in January for public comment. RCRC and others provided substantial public comment, much of which focused on the overly prescriptive approach of the proposed regulations. Given the level of concern raised, staff has been updating the regulations based on that public input and that of the CWC itself. As a part of this response, several senior Department of Water Resource’s staff, who had been instrumental in the development of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), were added to the CWC drafting team. With the addition of these key staff, there is a higher level of confidence that the Board will be able to meet the timeline for approval of the WSIP regulations.
The public comment at this week’s hearing from a wide variety of stakeholders was generally positive and the CWC staff expect to release the revised regulations by the end of August. The CWC has slated a meeting the first week of September to vote on the regulations which would then send them to the Office of Administrative Law for the formal comment period.