Groundwater Sustainability Agency

The California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (“SGMA”) is a package of three bills (Assembly Bill 1739, Senate Bill 1168, and Senate Bill 1319) that were passed by the State legislature and signed by the Governor in 2014. SGMA intends to mandate that groundwater basins throughout the State are managed in a manner that provides long-term stability in groundwater levels while not degrading water quality or creating unreasonable land subsidence. The overall intent of SGMA is for a local public agency to become a Groundwater Sustainability Agency (“GSA”) over each basin or subbasin described in Bulletin 118. SGMA defines sustainable groundwater management as the “management and use of groundwater in a manner that can be maintained during the planning and implementation horizon without causing “undesirable results”. Undesirable results are defined in SGMA and summarized as any of the following effects caused by groundwater conditions occurring throughout the basin: - Chronic lowering of groundwater levels indicating a significant and unreasonable depletion of supply - Significant and unreasonable reduction of groundwater storage - Significant and unreasonable seawater intrusion - Significant and unreasonable degraded water quality - Significant and unreasonable land subsidence - Surface water depletions that have significant and unreasonable adverse impacts on beneficial uses of the surface water”