On Oct. 29, the 5th Appellate District Court of Appeal affirmed the state of California’s authority under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
The appellate court reversed a preliminary injunction that had halted the State Water Resources Control Board from imposing fees and monitoring and reporting in the Tulare Lake Subbasin. The Kings County Farm Bureau challenged the state board’s plan to put the entire subbasin on “probation,” arguing the subbasin’s groundwater sustainability plan failed to show that it would achieve sustainability as required by the SGMA.
However, the court found “the State Board shall exclude portions of a basin from its probationary designation when a groundwater agency requests exclusion and demonstrates compliance with the sustainability goal.” Groundwater sustainability agencies were required to complete periodic evaluations of groundwater sustainability plans by 2025 for critically overdrafted subbasins. Evaluations for high-and medium-priority subbasins are due in 2017.
