Sustainable Groundwater Management Act: groundwater sustainability plans.

Jeff Gonzalez’s proposal reframes how California manages basins with multiple groundwater sustainability plans by tying department review to basin-wide coordination, and by elevating transparency in the process. In basins where different groundwater sustainability agencies develop separate plans, the submission to the Department of Water Resources is conditioned on the entire basin being covered by GSPs, with a joint submission that includes the plans, an explanation of how the basin-wide set satisfies applicable SGMA provisions, and a copy of the coordination agreement among the GSAs. For clarity, a groundwater sustainability agency (GSA) is a local entity responsible for preparing and implementing a groundwater sustainability plan (GSP) within a basin; a GSP is the document guiding groundwater management in that area.

Under the revised framework, once the basin is fully covered by GSPs, the GSAs must jointly submit the basin-wide package to the department. The submission must be posted by the department on its website, and the department must provide a 60-day window for public comment. The department is then required to evaluate the submitted GSPs within two years and issue an assessment, which may include recommended corrective actions to address deficiencies identified during the review. The bill preserves flexibility for GSAs to begin implementing their GSPs before the department’s assessment is issued, and it allows the coordination agreement among the GSAs to be amended after the assessment.

The measure adds a basin-wide coordination and transparency framework without altering the basic requirement that GSAs develop GSPs in priority basins. It is designed to formalize interagency coordination for multi-GSA basins, establish a public posting and comment process for basin-wide plans, and create an administrative review cycle that can lead to revision of inter-jurisdictional governance arrangements. The changes affect planning timelines, interagency governance, and the administrative workload for both GSAs and the Department of Water Resources, while not mandating new funding through the bill itself.