The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was amended in the 2015 Legislative Session by Senate Bill 13, authored by Senator Fran Pavley (Chapter 255, Statutes of 2015).
The bill made various “technical and clarifying” changes to SGMA as follows:
- Specifies that the State Water Resourced Control Board (SWRCB) is authorized to designate a high- or medium-priority basin as a probationary basin.
- Provides a local agency or groundwater sustainability agency (GSA) 90 or 180 days, as prescribed, to remedy certain deficiencies that caused the SWRCB to designate the basin as a probationary basin.
- Authorizes the SWRCB to develop an interim plan for certain probationary basins one year after the designation of the basin as probationary.
- Authorizes a mutual water company to participate in a GSA and provides that a water corporation or a mutual water company may participate through a memorandum of agreement or other legal agreement.
- Eliminates the SGMA requirement that a local agency or combination of local agencies that elect to be a GSA for a basin to submit a notice of intent to the Department of Water Resources (DWR) that includes the proposed boundaries of the basin and requires DWR to post the notice on its website within 15 days of receipt.
- Would require multiple agencies that have provided a GSA notice to DWR to seek to reach agreement to allow prompt designation of a GSA. Requires the submittal of a new notice and for DWR to post the notice if agreement is reached by the local agencies involving a material change from the information in the posted notice.
- Specifies that DWR is only to post complete notices it receives.
- Extends the deadline for a basin that is elevated to a medium- or high-priority basin before January 31, 2017, and is not subject to critical conditions of overdraft to be managed under a groundwater sustainability plan to January 31, 2022.
The full text of SB 13 and related information can be accessed here.