Existing law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, requires all groundwater basins designated as high- or medium-priority basins by the Department of Water Resources to be managed under a groundwater sustainability plan or coordinated groundwater plans, except as specified. Existing law requires all relevant state agencies, as described, to consider the policies of the act, and any groundwater sustainability plans adopted pursuant to the act, when revising or adopting policies, regulations, or criteria, or when issuing orders or determinations, where pertinent. Existing law authorizes any local agency or combination of local agencies overlying a groundwater basin to decide to become a groundwater sustainability
agency for that basin and imposes specified duties upon that agency or combination of agencies, as provided. Existing law authorizes a groundwater sustainability agency that adopts a groundwater sustainability plan to impose fees on the extraction of groundwater from the basin to fund costs of groundwater management, as specified.
This bill would make a nonsubstantive change to the latter requirement.
This bill would require a groundwater sustainability agency to consider the efforts of small farms, as defined, that recharge groundwater into the basin upon which their property is located when imposing or increasing fees.