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Experts urge unified modeling and county well-permitting guidance to limit streamflow depletion
Summary
Presenters told the Environmental Flows Work Group that counties need clearer technical guidance, low-cost decision-support tools and funding to evaluate streamflow depletion from groundwater pumping under SGMA and public-trust court precedents.
Experts advising California counties on groundwater permitting said protecting streamflow and associated habitat requires both better models and clearer regulatory guidance, citing the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and recent court rulings as drivers of change.
Nicholas Murphy, senior groundwater scientist for The Nature Conservancy, told the California Environmental Flows Work Group that groundwater is a key source of summer baseflow and that "groundwater is streamflow." He described a five-step guidance workflow his coalition recommends for county permitting: identify public-trust resources; set protective streamflow thresholds; assess existing streamflow against those thresholds; use integrated surface-water/groundwater models to estimate depletion risk; and translate results into revised well ordinances and permitting procedures.
Why it matters: groundwater-fed baseflows sustain rearing habitat for salmonids and…
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