Monterey County moves to sponsor AB 2728 to exempt small domestic wells from monitoring fees

Monterey County supervisors voted unanimously June 23 to sponsor Assembly Bill 2728, a legislative fix intended to address an unintended regressive impact created by Proposition 26 and local groundwater monitoring fees tied to well counts.

County legislative staff and the Water Resources Agency explained that when the county implemented a regulatory groundwater monitoring program it relied on a per‑well fee allocation (driven by Prop 26 defensibility). That approach made small domestic well owners pay the same per‑well monitoring fee as much larger extractors, producing a regressive result in which a large fraction of monitoring costs fell disproportionally on owners of many domestic wells.

Staff said AB 2728 shields diminimous groundwater extractors (as defined under SGMA) from monitoring fees in a manner consistent with state law and will allow reallocation of monitoring costs to larger extractors and other funding sources. County staff described the bill as urgent and noted the measure had been gut‑and‑amended; the board’s vote followed staff testimony that the bill had cleared a legislative committee on consent earlier the same day.

Board members thanked local legislative advocates and County staff for quick action; Supervisors noted the measure’s potential to reduce a regressive burden on low‑use well owners and to improve registration incentives, which in turn helps the county maintain accurate well counts for monitoring.

What’s next: County staff will formally sponsor AB 2728 and coordinate with the bill’s author and legislative advocates as the bill moves through the Legislature. The board asked staff to track how passage would change rate calculations and the monitoring program’s fee allocation if enacted.