Draft regulations for the Water Storage Investment Program scheduled to be released at the end of the month
With many issues yet to be resolved on the water storage regulations, members of the California Water Commission buckled down and got to work in a two-day meeting last week. Among the items on the agenda, and status report on the development of best management practices for the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, an update on the draft basin boundary modification request list, and numerous issues related to the water storage regulation.
UPDATE ON SGMA BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
Heather Shannon, Engineering Geologist with Department of Water Resources updated the Commission members on the status of the best management practices (BMPs) for sustainable groundwater management.
Per the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, the Department is required to publish best management practices on their website by January 1st, of 2017. In addition, the legislation requires that the Department hold public meetings in Northern California, the San Joaquin Valley, and in Southern California, as well as in front of the California Water Commission.
The role of the best management practices is to provide clarification, guidance, and examples to help groundwater sustainability agencies develop elements of their groundwater sustainability plans, Heather Shannon said. She explained that the best management practices are meant to be guidance documents for the development of groundwater sustainability plans, whereas the groundwater sustainability plan regulation presents the requirements for the plans themselves.
“Given the requirements in the legislation, the scope of the BMPs is flexible where additional guidance can be provided by the Department that would support groundwater sustainability plan development,” she said. “The Department has developed a BMP framework document that identifies a multi-phase approach to completing BMPs, with the first phase completing by the statutory deadline, January 1st, 2017. In that first phase, the intent is to provide the most useful BMPs right now are the most timely, and those that would be the highest ranked of importance. Subsequent phases or tentative phases would cover those remaining BMPs that are of importance but may not be the most critical in the time frame.”
Ms. Shannon noted that the Department is committed to completing two BMPs by the statutory deadline that are identified in the GSP regulations which are the BMPs for monitoring protocols and the installation of monitoring sites.
There are four types of best management practices: guidance documents; standards such as existing ASTM or USGS standards for monitoring sites; references, such as documents developed by NGOs; and case studies of examples where an organization or agency may have implemented actions or projects to overcome undesirable conditions in their basins. The BMPs will be available on a website that will act as a portal for housing the information and making it accessible to the public.
With the first BMPs due by January 1st, 2017, the Department is on a short timeline, so they used a survey as a way to solicit public input on the most important best management practices.
Department staff is still going through all the results, but Ms. Shannon shared some preliminary results.
She presented a graph of initial results, noting that it shows the distribution of what BMPs were most important and which were of least importance. “What falls out of this survey is that those items that were highest ranked or most important to the most number of participants were associated with the sustainable management criteria, such as establishing measurable objectives and assessment of undesirable results,” Ms. Shannon said. “We recognized this coming out of the GSP regulations that this was likely going to be something that we would need to further clarify.”
She noted that there were some additional items not identified in the list of BMPs that were on the survey, such as stakeholder engagement and communication. “We are looking into this and other items and how it might be appropriate to develop BMPs around these, but we recognize that there’s a lot of reference material that is already out there and we don’t wish to duplicate efforts if materials are already available,” she said.
Commissioner Curtin points out that monitoring was not too high on anybody’s list. Ms. Shannon agreed, but that is one item that was identified in the GSP regulations, so regardless of where monitoring protocols and installation of monitoring sites fall out in the survey, they are committed to completing those.
During the presentation, staff noted that they were unable to begin development of the best management practices until the groundwater sustainability plan regulations were finalized, because folks first wanted to know what was going to be in the regulation before deciding on the BMPs that would support the regulation.
Ms. Shannon then concluded by saying they would return in October with a draft list of BMPs. They also plan to hold public meetings in October as well, and post the final BMPs on the website in December of 2016.
BASIN BOUNDARY MODIFICATIONS
The Department of Water Resources will be finalizing the draft list of basin boundaries around September 1st. The Department staff feel the process went well for the first round after implementation of the regulation with about 70% of the 54 requested modifications either approved or approved with modifications.
During the public comment period and the after last month’s Water Commission meeting, issues for a few of the basins were reevaluated in response to comments received; some of those issues have been resolved. Tim Godwin, project manager for the basin boundary modification process, highlighted the changes.
Five basin boundary modification requests were reconsidered after receiving public comments. Los Osos and the Owens Valley basin boundary modification requests were reconsidered but still remain denied. The Chowchilla basin boundary request was initially denied based on direct opposition to the request by an affected agency; that agency has now withdrawn their opposition and the agencies involved have begun an interbasin agreement process, so the modification request has been approved. In the Paso Robles basin, a scientific boundary modification to subdivide the basin along a fault line was initially denied, but has now been approved based on additional information received.
Only one request remains unresolved, that of the San Luis Rey Valley, which is unique in that it has a subterranean stream finding in it. “This basin remains in review and we’re working hard to complete the process; we will report back in September,” Mr. Godwin said.
The final tally: of the 54 requests, 39 were approved, 11 were denied, 3 were incomplete, and 1 remains unresolved.
Once the list if finalized, the groundwater basins will be reprioritized as is required by the regulation, as well as for the formation of Groundwater Sustainability Agencies which are due by June 30 of 2017. “People need to know what these basins look like and what the shapes are so they can comply with the regulation moving forward,” Mr. Godwin said.
There will be an additional modification submission period in 2018, he noted.
The next steps are to finalize the basin boundary decisions and to update the GIS database to roll the information out to the public; the boundary modifications should be posted in early September. Bulletin 118 boundaries will then be updated; he noted that while the Bulletin 118 basin boundaries that these inform will be finalized, the written document itself won’t be completed until all the written descriptions for each modified basin are complete.
WATER STORAGE INVESTMENT PROGRAM UPDATE
The statutory deadline for the California Water Commission to adopt the regulation for the Water Storage Investment Program is December 15, 2016. With slightly less than four months to go, most of the two-day meeting was dedicated to working through the numerous remaining issues related to the regulation, including relative environmental values, early funding for projects, the evaluation criteria, the framework for quantifying benefits, and the administration of public benefits.
The draft regulations are scheduled to be released on August 29; there will be a brief Commission via teleconference on that day for Commission members to vote to send the draft to Office of Administrative Law and start the public comment period.
Chairman Joe Byrne said a workshop would be scheduled in September to go through the language of the regulation and to give public a chance to come and talk during comment period as they are completing their comments. The public comment period will end in early October.
Also of note, a series of three public briefings will be held this week and next on the technical reference documents, which are the documents which will support applicants’ project analyses and quantification of public benefits. The briefings are open to all interested parties; however, the intended audience of this document is the technical staff that will be responsible for running models and conducting the technical and economic analysis on proposed projects for the WSIP funding application. Note public comments will not be taken at the briefings. The briefings will be held Tuesday (today) in Fresno, Thursday in Auburn, and next Tuesday in Pleasant Hill. The Pleasant Hill briefing will be webcast.
FOR MORE INFORMATION …
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