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Plumas County adopts state-required Drought Resilience Plan to support small water systems and domestic wells
Summary
The Board adopted a drought-resilience plan prepared with Stantec to comply with SB 552; the plan prioritizes short-term emergency water responses (bottled water, hauling, filling stations) and ten long-term strategies including record updates, grant assistance and coordination with regional agencies.
Plumas County supervisors voted March 10 to adopt a Drought Resilience Plan developed with technical assistance from Stantec that is designed to meet the requirements of Senate Bill 552.
Emily Finegan, Stantec project lead, told the board the plan focuses on vulnerable state small water systems, domestic-well communities and local small water systems and was developed with a county drought task force and public meetings. The plan lists five short-term response actions — packaged water supplies, water hauling with temporary bulk storage, dedicated water filling stations, staging locations for distribution and mutual-aid agreements with providers — and 10 long-term mitigation strategies, including updating state well records, improving dry-well reporting and expanding grant-application support for small systems.
Finegan underscored that many steps in the plan will require additional county staff time or external grant funding: nearly all of the short-term and long-term items were flagged as requiring staffing or outside funds. She noted DWR-funded technical assistance helped produce the plan and that the Department of Water Resources is convening an interagency DRIP collaborative to support county implementation.
Public commenters stressed that any programs involving private domestic wells should remain voluntary and that the county should emphasize watershed protection, on-site storage options and homeowner education. The board approved the plan after public comment and staff discussion, directing county departments to pursue the implementation steps and identified funding opportunities listed in the plan.
The adopted plan places Plumas County in compliance with SB 552 and asks staff to schedule annual task-force coordination meetings (suggested in May each year) to track potential drought risks, monitor groundwater indicators and update outreach resources and contact databases.
