Carpinteria Groundwater Basin Management and Invitation for Public Input on Proposed Groundwater Fee

Written by: Robert McDonald, General Manager of Carpinteria Valley Water District

To protect and regulate groundwater supplies across the state and avoid long-term economic impacts, California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) in 2014. This enacted a framework to help avoid overdraft and manage these shared resources at the local level. SGMA requires any groundwater basin classified as high- and medium-priority by the state Department of Water Resources (DWR) to create a Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) and develop a Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) to avoid undesirable results. GSAs must reach sustainability within 20 years of adopting their GSPs.