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Board delays vote on Salinas Valley groundwater monitoring fees after contested equity debate
Summary
Supervisors put off adopting a new groundwater monitoring program fee schedule and accepted staff's request to return in August after a contentious discussion about whether small (de minimis) well users would be fairly charged; staff proposed standing up the program for a year with grant funding and returning with refined options.
Monterey County supervisors on July 8 declined to adopt proposed groundwater monitoring program (GMP) regulatory fees and directed staff to return at the board's first August meeting with a date-certain resolution after a heated debate about fairness to small "de minimis" well users.
The water-resources presentation described five proposed GMP services: (1) an initial well registration fee for wells not already in agency databases; (2) an annual registration/maintenance fee; (3) extraction reporting for wells pumping more than the state's de minimis threshold (about two acre-feet/year); (4) groundwater-level monitoring using a representative network of wells; and (5) groundwater-quality monitoring for subbasins that have called for it in…
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