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Senate hearing finds mixed progress on SGMA implementation; state and local roles remain central
Summary
Lawmakers heard expert and agency testimony on the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), including accomplishments—wider data collection, GSA formation and managed recharge in 2023—and persistent challenges: deficient plans in several basins, outreach gaps, funding shortfalls and tensions between adjudication and local plans.
The Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee convened an informational hearing on SGMA, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act enacted in 2014, to review 11 years of implementation, progress and continuing challenges.
Chair Limon opened the session saying the hearing would examine “progresses and challenges” in implementation and noted groundwater’s central role in California’s water supply. Professor Richard Frank, co‑director of the California Environmental Law and Policy Center at UC Davis School of Law, told the committee SGMA’s central design is local implementation with state monitoring and a target to reach sustainability in the early 2040s. He said the statute sets a regulatory overlay intended to prevent “undesirable results,” including land subsidence and saltwater intrusion.
Paul Gosselin, deputy director for sustainable groundwater management at the Department of Water Resources (DWR), told the committee nearly every basin required to form a groundwater sustainability agency (GSA) did so and most submitted groundwater…
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