AB 754: Water management planning: water shortages.

(1)Existing law, the Urban Water Management Planning Act, requires every public and private urban water supplier that directly or indirectly provides water for municipal purposes to prepare and adopt an urban water management plan. Existing law requires an urban water management plan to quantify past, current, and projected water use, identifying the uses among water use sectors, including, among others, commercial, agricultural, and industrial. Existing law requires every urban water supplier to prepare and adopt a water shortage contingency plan as part of its urban water management plan. Existing law requires the water shortage contingency plan to include the procedures for used in conducting an annual water supply and demand assessment, including the key data inputs and assessment methodology used to evaluate the urban water suppliers water supply reliability for the current year and one dry year. Existing law requires the key data inputs and assessment methodology to include specified information, including, among other things, a description and quantification of each source of water supply.

This bill would require a water shortage contingency plan to include, if if, based on a description and quantification of each source of water supply, a single reservoir constitutes at least 50% of the total water supply, an identification of the dam and description of existing reservoir management operations, as specified, and if the reservoir is owned and operated by the urban water supplier, a description of operational practices and approaches, as specified. The bill would require a water shortage contingency plan to include reservoir shortage levels relative to the target water supply storage curve that will trigger specified shortage response actions.

(2)Existing law requires an agricultural water supplier to prepare and adopt an agricultural water management plan with specified components and to update those plans on or before April 1 in the years ending in 6 and one. Existing law requires an agricultural water supplier to include develop a drought plan as part of its agricultural water management plan. Existing law requires the drought plan to describe the agricultural water suppliers actions relating to drought preparedness and management of water supplies and allocations during drought conditions, as provided. Existing law requires drought response planning to include, among other things, policies and a process for declaring a water shortage and for implementing water shortage allocations and related response actions.

This bill would require, if if, based on specified findings related to water supply, a single reservoir constitutes at least 50% of the total water supply, the policies for declaring a water shortage to consider specified certain information related to that reservoir.