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Butte County Supervisors Prepare To Regulate Groundwater

Quinn Commendant
/
Flickr, Creative Commons

 

Even the longest journey, begins with a first step. The Confucian trope may best encapsulate what’s ahead for officials in Butte County, and California’s other counties as they slowly prepare to regulate the state’s vast but diminishing groundwater supplies.

On Tuesday, supervisors in Butte County will be asked to establish a lead local agency ultimately responsible for assuring that local groundwater supplies are wisely used. 

On Jan. 1, California became the final Western state to approve regulating groundwater with the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. The main, long-held concern is that groundwater is being tapped, pumped and used much faster than it is being replaced. 

While water levels in a reservoir are easy for anyone to see, groundwater quantities are harder to track yet highly important. Groundwater makes up between a third and half of the water used. If groundwater supplies became exhausted, California’s frequent droughts could turn catastrophic.

Under the state law, local officials are required by 2017 to create new regulatory authorities. That’s the action expected tomorrow. Those new groups would have until 2020 to develop a sustainability plan for any groundwater basin considered “critically overdrafted,” and until 2022 for all the others. If the plans don’t achieve their goals 20 years after being enacted, state officials could move to implement stricter plans. 

 

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