Senate Standing Committee on Natural Resources and Water

Will come to order. Today we have an informational hearing on groundwater, particularly Sustainable Groundwater management Act. At 11 years, we're going to hear about the progresses and challenges Groundwater is one of our state's most vulnerable resources.

It is relied upon by municipalities, industries, agriculture, and it plays an important role in the future sustainability of our state's water supply. During a year with average precipitation, groundwater provides about 40% of California's water for urban, rural and agriculture needs. During dry years, that number increases to 60% when surface water supplies are limited.

More than 9 million Californians rely on groundwater to meet their drinking water needs, including those in disadvantaged communities struggling to get clean water. However, decades of unregulated pumping has put that resource at risk. In addition to wells, going dry over pumping can cause land subsidence, which can damage infrastructure, or salt water intrusion, which can impact water quality.

In 2014, the Legislature enacted the Sustainable Groundwater Management act, also known as SGMA, requiring agencies in medium and high priority basins to form groundwater sustainability agencies and develop a plan for the sustainability of these basins.

The Senate Natural Resources and Water Committee is convening this hearing to get to hear about the progress our state has made in achieving groundwater sustainability and also understands some challenges that Californians face in implementing the act.

During our first panel, we will hear from Professor Richard Frank, Professor of Environmental Practice at UC Davis School of Law and co Director of the California Environmental Law and Policy center, who will provide us with an overview of sgma.

We'll hear from Paul Gosselin, Deputy Director of Sustainable Water Management for the Department of Water Resources, who who will go over GSPS and the process the Department uses to determine whether a GSP is an adequate, appropriate means. Then we'll also hear from Tina Cannon Leahy, Supervising Attorney of the State Water Resources Control Board.

And we'll talk about the processes used for the State Water Board to determine whether a basin should should be put on probation.

During the second panel, we will hear from various groups and their firsthand experience with SGMA's implementation, including Javier Silva, water operator for the Yokayo Tribe, as well as Lynn Carlisle, Executive Director of the Cuyama Valley Family Resource Center.

And we will hear from Piret Harmon, General Manager of Salinas Valley Basin's Groundwater Sustainability Agency, as well as Arshdeep Singh, but he was the President of the Punjabi American Growers Group. And finally, the hearing will ask Members of the public to share their perspective on SGMA implementation.

Please note that we will be hearing all of the panels on the agenda prior to taking public comment. It certainly looks like, we have some interest today, and in order to give everyone a chance to speak, and based on the number of people, we will be limiting public comment to a minute each.

If you are not able to provide public comment ahead of during this hearing, you are always welcome to send it in to the Committee so that we can include it as part of the Committee record. I want to thank the panelists in advance for showing up this morning and also for sharing their insights and perspectives today.

I know everybody is very busy folks came from different parts of the state to be able to share this with you. So now I am going to open it up to any of my second colleagues if they'd like to do opening remarks, and we're going to go to our Vice Chair.

Thank you very much, and thank you all for attending this morning. This is a really, really important facet of our water issues. And very simply, in California, we need to get our water act together. And this is part of it. Our groundwater sustainability is recognized to have some real, real challenges out there.

And, you know, after 11 years, there's a lot of implementation going on that will help these groundwater issues, you know, be more manageable. But it also points to this when in a drought, we're using 60% of our water coming out of the ground. What it also points to is the need for us to have more water above ground during a drought. And so that has to be part of the big picture for water also.

And we recognize that the other part of this is, and I've been, you know, after reading through all of the material that has been submitted by various agencies and people interested here, it's expensive and the water, you know, some of this is going to take it just can't fall back on ratepayers.

Some of this is going to take some investment and prioritization from the state. And we also recognize that. So as we're going through our budgets and looking at some of the priorities that we have to have, this is like some of the basic infrastructure priorities.

And so hopefully in the next year or two, we will get some of these projects implemented, the injection projects and things like that, to increase and make the underwater recharging of our aquifers more efficient and more effective. And we'll be able to capture some of our runoff and do that.

But it is, you know, it's just one part of an overhaul that we have to do in California. And so many of us are glad to be on board with trying to address this issue. And we're delighted to take the input from the people that really know water out there, and those are the experts and the agencies that we have and also the local agencies. So appreciate that. With that being said, I am going to be in and out.

I have to present a Bill at 9:30 and I have another Committee to start at 9:30. But we are watching this also on our screen in our office. I have staff taking notes. So I will get back here and ask questions if I can. But I will be running in and out of here. It's not a lack of interest, it's a lack of more of one person to do all that. So thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Seyarto, next we're going to go to Senator Laird. Then we're going to go to Senator Grove.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for scheduling this hearing because it's hard to believe that it's been 11 years since this act was enacted. And for those of us and represent districts where in my district, all but a very few places don't import any water whatsoever.

So you have to live with what falls from the sky or what's in the ground. And if it's not managed, there's nothing there. There's a major story just this morning in the San Luis Obispo newspaper about struggles to balance a stressed basin there.

And I want to thank the chair also for sort of focusing a little bit on the Cuyama Valley, which until December I represented part of and the chair has gotten the part that I represented since then. And as much as over 50 years I thought I understood water policy.

What's going on in the Kwaiama Valley has taught me things that I didn't understand clearly. And the bottom line is, is that if you are efficient and you really cover yourself and many of the small farmers there are, you are punished by the adjudication or other processes.

And if you overuse and there's just two farmers that use 70% of the water in that valley, you are rewarded for the overuse. And that should be a policy question that is in front of us. And so I really thank you for shining a light on this and look forward to the hearing.

Thank you, Senator Laird. And even though you may not represent the district, I look forward to continuing to work with you. And then we're going to go to Senator Grove.

thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for holding this hearing. It is very important as a Legislator who represents the top three food producing counties in the world, I'm very concerned about food production. Our farmers are getting very little to no water, no surface water.

We need to focus on surface water deliveries and figure out why that's not working. I mean, we know why, but we need to convince our colleagues why if you're going to continue to grow food in California. Water in my district has gone from roughly 100 to 200, $200 an acre foot to over $1,000 an acre foot.

There's been adjudication and sigma issues with specifically Kern and Kings county, where there has been information provided and. And cases being taken before the Water Board since 2018 and 2022. And there's no response from the Water Board on these issues that need to be addressed immediately.

You also have the adjudication issue that my colleague from the Central coast, former Secretary of Natural Resources, addressed where sgma. There's a lot of effort and resources put into sgma. And then you have adjudication issues that circumvent Sigma, which kind of put us at a crossroads, like where do we go from here?

And so I appreciate the chair's interest in this issue and making sure that we address specifically not only disadvantaged communities, but also making sure that we have the water we need to grow the food that we all eat and that we ship all over the world. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Grove. Seeing no additional Members or comments, we're going to go ahead and begin. So we're going to invite our panelists up. So if we could have Richard Frank, Paul Gosselin, and Tina Leahy, please come up.

So each speaker will have 12 minutes. We will be timing you just to keep a track of this. And so we're going to go in the order which I brought you up. So we will go ahead and start with Professor Frank.

Thank you very much, Chair Limon and Members. Delighted and honored to be here. Yes. I've been asked to give a quick overview of Sigma, the landmark legislation enacted in 2014 and the related groundwater adjudication legislation that followed and was enacted one year later in 2015.

Let me briefly tee up the issue because out of crisis comes both opportunity and action. We had a major drought, one of the, one of the most severe and prolonged in the modern history of California that began in 2012 and actually continued through 2016.

And that really, I think, was the, the incentive for a broad based coalition, somewhat surprising coalition, surprisingly broad coalition, to come together and begin negotiating on what became the Sustainable Groundwater Management act before passage. Groundwater regulation to the extent exist it existed, it all was done by local governments that chose to to do so.

And most of the local government regulation was really limited to making sure, attempting to make sure that groundwater from a local aquifer within a particular area was not shipped out to another part of the state. It was not a comprehensive process.

But as a result of the severe and protracted drought that was ongoing in 2014, as I say, there was a large consensus to address the rather alarming overdrafting of groundwater aquifers around the state that, as has been mentioned, groundwater in many years, in dry years, serves as the credit card or bank account that water users draw upon to make up for the lack of surface water.

The severe overdrafting that occurred beginning in 2012 and was going on in 2014 has resulted in severe overdrafting of already depleted and shrinking groundwater aquifers. Land subsidence in some areas, particularly in the Central Valley, in coastal areas like Senator Laird, represents saltwater intrusion, threats of saltwater intrusion and contamination of groundwater supplies.

And again, going back to the San Joaquin Valley, rather dramatic and subsidence, land subsidence as a result of powerful pumping of groundwater until 2014, I think it's fair to say that state regulation of groundwater was the third rail of water politics.

But as a result of the crisis and a lot of visionary action across the political spectrum from some NGOs like the Public Policy Institute of California, the Water foundation and the Association of California Water Agencies, led in a very visionary way by the General manage, Tim Quinn, all came together to support this.

But the biggest advocate and I think the greatest influence was then Governor Jerry Brown, who not like the usual approach of legislators formulating regulation, then the Governor considers that he and his senior staff were on board and advocating strongly for this legislation from the get go in 2013 and 2014. So the legislative consensus emerged.

There were three bills that were passed, two sponsored by former Senator Fran Pavley, one by Assembly Member Roger Dickinson and SGMA was passed in September of 2014.

The key premise of SGMA and distinguishing it from state regulation of surface water supplies that are maintained at the state level, primarily by the State Water Resources Control Board, was that Sigma was explicitly intended to be a bottom up process really initiated at the local level with some significant state monitoring and oversight of the process.

But Governor Brown, during the legislative debate over the Bill said that famously that groundwater management is best done at the local level. And that's the overarching theme of Sigma. The ultimate goal is to bring overdrafted aquifers into secession sustainability by the early 2000 and 40s. It provides, and this is important, a regulatory overlay.

Sigma is a regulatory overlay over the judge developed law of groundwater rights, which is not an issue that the Legislature has gotten much into. So one has to distinguish about those two functions. The creation of SGMA as a regulatory overhead. The local bodies the lead state agency in to implement SGMA is the State Water Resources Control Board.

And you'll hear about that in more detail in a moment. The and they had DWR had already at the time of SGMA already identified some 515 groundwater aquifers in California and the SGMA. And the process is really focused on those critically overdrafted and highly and moderately overdrafted groundwater aquifers. And the numbers tend to change.

But that's more like between 100 and 150 that have been the key focus of the regulatory efforts at both the local and state levels to implement sgma. The local bodies Again this is a very interesting process.

SGMA didn't designate that it would be counties or cities or water district that would have the sole authority to self organize into sustainable groundwater agencies. It really left that decision of who would be involved at the local level with the one pronouncement. It couldn't be a purely private entity that served as a groundwater sustainability agency.

It had to be a public entity like a city or county or a quasi public agency like a water district that either unilaterally for a particular basin or in conjunction with other related public or quasi public entities got involved.

So those local bodies, counties, cities, water districts and others were mandated to self organize in very expeditious fashion into creation of groundwater sustainability agencies for each designated overdrafted groundwater aquifer subject to continuing Department of Water Resources oversight and support, including financial funding for these new local entities.

The GSAs relatively short deadline to self organize January 1st July 1st of 2017 and this was quite successful. Virtually all GSAs for all the targeted groundwater aquifers under SIGMA were were were organized and reported to DWR without much controversy. As I say they were public or quasi public entities under sigma.

That formation is subject to DWR review and approval and that process went relatively smoothly.

If in those instances in which a local entity does not step up to take responsibility for being the groundwater sustainability Agency, SGMA provides as a default, the county or counties overlying a designated overdrafted groundwater aquifer would have to take on that obligation the next Once that self organization was completed, each approved groundwater sustainability agency was required and is required to prepare a groundwater sustainability plan for each targeted overdrafted aquifer.

The local GSAs were required to prepare and submit those plans to DDPR for its careful review and approval and for those critical aquifers by January 1st of 2020 for high and medium overdrafted aquifers by January 1st, 2022. The goal of all of these GSPs is to bring overdrafted aquifers into sustainability by the early 2000s.

A key definition in SGMA is sustainable yield which is defined in the statute as the maximum quantity of groundwater calculated over long term conditions of the basin that can be withdrawn each year without producing a so called undesirable result which has been nicknamed the six Deadly Sins.

Those being persistent lowering of groundwater levels in subsurface aquifers, a significant decrease in groundwater storage capability of aquifers due to compaction or collapse due to groundwater over pumping, saltwater intrusion for coastal GSAs in coastal areas, degradation of water quality, especially contaminated of drinking water supplies from groundwater sources and finally surface water depletion.

Hydrologists will tell us that the vast majority of groundwater aquifers are hydrologically connected to surface water supplies and resources. But the law is probably a century or two behind the science when it comes to groundwater and we have different legal systems for quite different for groundwater regulation on the one hand versus surface water supplies.

Most proposed groundwater sustainability plans and you'll hear from Paul in a moment were submitted on time. It required a great deal of heavy lift by DWR to review those carefully. Most of the groundwater sustainability plans were ultimately approved by DWR.

A handful were rejected as either incomplete, sent back to the GSAs for revisions per the the comments and and defects noted by DWR and some were considered outright defective and unlikely to address the groundwater overdraft in a particular groundwater basin.

The GSP components consists of the administrative information about the gsa, the setting that the the information about the particular overdrafted groundwater aquifer, the projects and management actions that the GSA commits to undertaking to address overdrafting and to bring bring an aquifer into sustainability and the like. As you'll hear from Ms.

Tina Canon Leahy, the State Water Board has a similar but narrower role. There was a key political compromise that led to DWR being asked to take the lead role in at the state level and implementing Sigma. But the Water Board has a backup backstop role as well, which you'll hear about from her.

And again the underground or sustainability agencies have have depending on if they're critically overdrafted or medium or seriously overdrafted, required.

To bring I think we're at your.

Time right into sustainability.

Great. Thank you so much. I could answer any questions after the other thank you. Thank you so thank you Professor Frank Next we're going to go to Paul Goslin, please.

Thank you. All right, this is on. So thank you Chair Limone and Committee Members. It is real honor and pleasure to be here today. I do want to acknowledge and say to you all, happy Groundwater Awareness Week that we're celebrating this week.

It's incredible to think about the tremendous work that California has accomplished since the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater management Act in 2014.

That work, I just want to acknowledge, wouldn't have been possible without the real strong partnerships of the local agencies who stepped up and formed the agencies, as well as other partners, NGOs, growers, others at the local level because it is a local process.

I really want to thank everyone in those hundred basins that have really put work, blood, sweat and tears into protecting drinking water, reducing land sinking from subsidence, and the future reliability of groundwater supplies for agriculture, our communities and the environment. And the accomplishments just don't go stop there on the process because it's more than just the process.

The last 10 years under SGMA, we've been collecting more data than ever before. If you think back in 2014 during that drought, we had far less data and information than we do now in providing better understanding of groundwater conditions and ultimately leading to better management decisions.

Additionally, water supply reliability is improving as we've continued to invest in local recharge projects. We're already seeing results and I want to highlight 2023, which was a major, major event year. We did see agencies divert and recharge over 4.1 million acre feet to underground storage through managed efforts.

We're continuing to work through our partners at the State Water Board and Fish and Wildlife to achieve the Governor's goal of half a million acre feet of permitted recharge annually. While considerable amount of work lies ahead, I want to highlight some of the most significant accomplishments over the past 10 years.

As was mentioned, the deadlines for that were considerable in the act, had largely been met every time. And that really just speaks to the commitment locally. And this is very, very hard work and very controversial work to have to do at the local level.

And I can proudly report right now that every basin has individually adopted a GSP that is being implemented right now. And those critically overdrafted basins, they're in their fifth year of implementation. I do want to talk a little bit about the department's review of plans. We have approved 86 basins and some of these are alternative plans.

And when we review plans, we do go through the entirety of the the plans, which are in excess of 1000 pages or more, with modeling and other information to make sure they're complete, make sure they cover things. But the initial review, the standard and the law is substantially compliant.

And so a couple things we were looking at and two principal ones. Do they have enough projects and management actions to plausibly deal with their overdraft situation, knowing that it's a 20 year timeframe and these projects will need to take time to come into fruition. But we wanted at least there was a good suite.

The other major piece, and this is where basin started to get into some difficulties, was the sustainable management criteria. And this takes a look at more than just ending overdraft, but evaluating how does that affect groundwater uses and users and to avoid undesirable results. And that's where we found basins. One did not address that completely or structurally.

They weren't aligned with what the act was, was calling for us. So when we did find basins that didn't initially do that, we had an incomplete process that gave them six months to resolve the deficiencies and respond to us.

During that process, we opened ourselves up to consultation with the GSAs to explain what the deficiencies were and to help guide them. And fortunately most basins came through that process and got approval, but seven did not. And seven are under the jurisdiction of the State Water Resources Control Board.

And I do want to say one thing about approved plans. I consider them conditionally approved. I think One basin said they were real excited to get the approval letter and then they opened it and it was a 70 page staff report with a number of recommended corrective actions. So there was more work to do.

But again, we wanted to strike that balance of knowing how far they need to go and whether they're substantially compliant, because no plan is going to be perfect, especially from the initial sense. But also, I just want to emphasize too that the review of plans, as bureaucratic as that may sound, it was far more than that.

It was more than just a compliance check and responding in writing. It was actually a good feedback loop for us because when basins didn't follow what was in the law or address overdraft, that kind of reflected on us about what can we do to help basins along through either better guidance or assistance.

Because we're, you know, working shoulder to shoulder with these GSAs. And the only way the state's going to get through to groundwater sustainability is to have successful local agency implementation. So guidance has been helpful. And I think one area that was really pronounced was addressing drinking water.

And this was something most basins came in and didn't really believe that they had a responsibility for dry wells.

And through a lot of discussion and consultation about how you could have dry wells and not consider it undesirable results, basins acknowledged through the guidance document we, we issued that they are stewards for the entire basin for all the groundwater uses and uses, which is a new role for many agencies.

And now basins have acknowledged they do have responsibility and their goals to address dry wells. So, you know, providing guidance on sort of a feedback loop and other assistance is real important. Just looking ahead, we have two major pieces coming up. One is guidance on interconnected surface water, the depletion.

And we're going to get that guidance document out the second quarter of this year. It's a very technical issue. It's something obviously that is fundamental. The science is fundamental, but the management and approaches have really not been fleshed out.

So we're going to be embarking on sort of, I think, the paramount approach on how to deal with depletion of interconnected surface waters in California. The other main piece is subsidence. And we're going to issue a best management practice document again in roughly the second quarter of this year that's going to be in draft.

It's going to go out for public workshops throughout the state. But again, subsidence is something that is. We've seen some improvement in some areas, but largely we have not.

And this is something where looking at expenditures and you know, state, local and Federal Governments are spending billions of dollars every year just to keep pace with the ongoing impacts of subsidence.

So as difficult as it is to implement this and it is going to cause impacts, the trade off is continuing to spend public funds, you know, billions of dollars on a continuous problem needs to end. So we're going to be coming out with that BMP second quarter.

So now that we have all basins are implementing adopted plans, we're making a transition ourselves to basin stewardship. And this is an ongoing responsibility. We have to assure that basins are on track for sustainability and are in compliance. Our approach is going to build on two pillars in the law that we've held today.

One is that oversight role and also the assistance role. So we are going to have more emphasis on how basins are actually implementing their plans and how basin conditions are improving. We are still going to issue determinations on periodic evaluations.

But you know, the days of deep dives into documents and basing how well basins are doing on the written word is going to somewhat be secondary to actually what's happening on the ground through empirical data.

And so even some of the engagement is going to involve, I think a little bit more even informal contact with GSAs, maybe a phone call if we start seeing something going awry and trying to resolve things at the earliest possible moment.

But in the end, if we still don't find basins are on track for sustainability or starting to get out of compliance, or are not responding to recommended corrective actions, any basin, even with approved plans, can be deemed incomplete and be responsive in six months to address those or ultimately go inadequate and be subject to the State Board.

So it is going to be an ongoing process for our engagement with local agencies. In the end, we expect all plans to adapt over time and change due to climate change and also due to water supply reliability changes, et cetera. And again, our intent is to keep basins on track for sustainability.

And again, our past guidance has been really helpful on various aspects of the law. We also have facilitation services which has been enormously helpful for basins to resolve local disputes.

We have expanded our translation services not just from the eight languages we do written translation services for agencies, but also verbal translation services that we've been providing to local agencies for meetings. And that's been very successful in its early onset.

And then we do have technical support services with, well, installations and other technical information, including a basin characterization project we're doing, which is characterizing the basin using all the data we have, including the geophysic data. And this is also going to help local agencies fill their data gaps.

That way their money and resources they have hopefully can be spent more on projects and implementation actions and we can help provide the scientific foundation. So the next five years, just looking ahead, are going to be somewhat rocky. I've been saying the easy part's over. You know, the planning part's over.

The first couple years were GSA formations getting ducks lined up, getting plans done. And so really plans just started getting implemented five years ago. But now the rubber is meeting the road. Groundwater sustainability agents have difficult decisions to make that are going to affect growers, businesses, communities and the environment.

We're going to continue to provide the support and compliance oversight to help GSAs continue to navigate groundwater sustainability.

In closing, I just want to say, you know, I'm absolutely confident from where we sit today, you know, we are going to achieve the promise that SGMA offered when it was enacted in 2014, in the early 2000 and 40s, to have groundwater sustainable that's going to benefit agriculture, communities and the environment from the certainty, even in the face of continuous climate change.

So, thank you.

Thank you. Next we're going to go to Ms. Leahy.

So good morning, chair Members of the Committee and staff. It's Tina Cannon Leahy with the State Water Resources Control Board and it's my pleasure to be here. So I'll talk about the State Water Board's intervention role.

As Director Gosselin mentioned that In March of 2023, the Department of Water Resources determined that six critically overdrafted basins were inadequate and referred them to the State Water Board, thus initiating the State Water Board's intervention role. Under stgma, there's a seventh basin that he mentioned that I'll mention at the end. So intervention.

The State Water Board's role in intervention is a two step role. So the first step is whether or not the board determines that the basin should be designated as probationary. So that's the first step. If a basin is designated as probationary, then after a minimum of a year, the board could impose an interim plan.

If the basin did not correct the deficiencies that made the basin probationary. So that's the two step role. So the six basins that were referred to the State Water Resources Control Board were Chowchilla Delta, Mendota, Cahuilla, Kern, Tulare Lake and Tule.

And so in each of those basins, staff at the Office of Sustainable Groundwater Management at the State Water Board began intensively working with the locals and coordinating and giving them technical assistance, reviewing the recommendations of DWR when they referred the basin over and then evaluating the deficiencies in order for the board to be able to recommend corrective actions.

So the board's role is slightly different in that when a basin comes over, the board has to identify recommended corrective actions. They're not necessarily the only actions that a basin could take to remedy its deficiencies, but the board is required to identify those corrective actions.

Although SGMA does not require, it doesn't say anywhere that the State Water Resources Control Board needs to develop a staff report. In the interest of transparency, the board began developing staff reports detailing the background, the deficiencies and the potential corrective actions. So that was something that was done for, as I said, for transparency.

And then it provided those draft staff reports with the hearing notice. So under the Sustainable Groundwater management Act or SGMA, we're required to provide 90 days notice before we hold a probationary hearing. And as I'll talk about, the board provided much more notice than that.

And it also provided those draft staff reports in those basins where we held hearings for public comment so the public could give feedback back to the board prior to the hearing and prior to the development of a final staff report. So that was an additional step the board did for transparency.

For example, In October of 2023, the board noticed the Tulare Lake sub basin probationary hearing and that it noticed it for April 16th of 2024, which sounds like a lot of time, but that was in order to have that public process to continue to work with the groundwater sustainability agencies on correcting their deficiencies, which they could do at any time prior to a probationary hearing.

That would be the best outcome actually. And then we provided a two month public comment period. And I'll note that the notice of that and this is the pattern that we have followed, also provided the dates, times and locations of public workshops.

So the board held a virtual workshop so that people could be able to attend online and then held in person workshop in Hanford to explain the draft staff report to the public, to GSAs and other interested persons and tell them how they could engage and how we could take comments.

We also distributed those meeting notices in both English and Spanish and had simultaneous translation services at the workshops for affected public to be able to come and to understand what was being presented. On April 16th of 2024, the board held its probationary hearing and determined that it was warranted to place the Tulare Lake subblasin on probation.

So the board the basin was placed on probation at that time. I'll note that at that time the basin had not submitted a revised groundwater sustainability plan to the State Water Board. The only plan that the State Water Board had in front of it was the plans that DWR had already determined were deficient.

And that, of course, is now the subject of litigation. The Tulare Lake sub basin probationary determination on March 7. Then the board noticed a Sept. 17 probationary hearing for the Tule subbasin. And that followed the same pattern of board staff working intensively with the locals to try to remedy what those deficiencies were.

The board providing notice and an opportunity for the public to comment on a draft staff report and taking and considering that comment.

And also providing workshops, a virtual workshop, and then one in Porterville, a local workshop to explain to the public and other affected persons how the board had arrived at its determinations, what it was looking at, what the potential deficiencies were that the.

That the groundwater sustainability agencies were trying to correct and had simultaneous translation at that workshop as well. On September 17, the Thule sub basin was designated as a probationary basin with certain exclusions.

So there was exclusions for, for example, the Delaney Early Mark irrigation district, which the staff had looked at the technical information about that irrigation district and determined it was a net recharger actually in the groundwater basin.

And so had provided an exclusion from reporting and fees, which is one of the consequences of being placed on probation is that then reporting and fees have to be reporting must be made and fees should be paid. On July 25, the board noticed February 202025.

So we just had that probationary hearing for the Kern sub basin that followed the same pattern.

But I will note that in response to Punjabi growers who had said that they needed translation services, the state bard also added that so had the virtual workshop in person workshop and had simultaneous translation services at those workshops in both Spanish and Punjabi for those growers.

The board acknowledged at its hearing on September 17th that actually tremendous progress had been made in the Kern subbasin. The Kern subbasin had submitted new groundwater sustainability plans to the board in December, which staff were able to do not a full review of, but enough of a review in order to recommend that the hearing should be continued.

So the board Members were aware of the progress that was being made and they adopted a resolution asking the Kern subbasin to provide revised groundwater sustainability plans in June, which then staff will review and then there will be a subsequent hearing for the current subbasin. The continued hearing in September.

The three remaining subbasins also have made a lot of progress. So Chowchilla Delta, Mendota and Cahuilla. The hearing for Cahuilla was Originally scheduled for January 72025. And in fact, that basin had made so much progress that staff recommended that that be taken off camp calendar.

So I think the important thing here, I know I'm talking about each basin individually is that's how we look at them. Each basin is unique. The staff looks at the unique challenges, the unique deficiencies in those basins and also the progress that those basins are making.

And then with that information in front of it, the State Water Board makes its decision on Feb. On Feb. 27, the Department of Water Resources. This is the seventh basin deemed that the San Joaquin Valley Pleasant Valley Sub Basin. There are two Pleasant valleys. It's very confusing. So just to let you know, there's two Pleasant Valley subbasins.

They deemed that that one was inadequate and referred it to the State Water Board for us to begin the process that I have described of the technical meetings, very intensive.

I can't emphasize enough the intensive technical meetings that State Water Board staff have gone through in every basin in order to help move them to sustainability in recognition that, as Professor Frank said at the beginning, that groundwater is managed best locally. So that is the goal that we have, is to help those basins.

So now we have the Pleasant Valley Basin and we are in the initial stages of now doing our review and coordination with the Pleasant Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency. And with that, unless you have any questions, that was what I had on that first part.

Thank you so much. So thank you. I'm going to now move it to my colleagues. We're going to start with Senator Grove.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Mr. Frank, you made a statement in when you opened that said hydrology, hydrologically affected basins had a. Because of a lack of a surface water. Is that what your comment was or did I miss?

I don't believe so. I think what I, what I tried to say was that most hydrologists, the groundwater science is much more well developed than the legal framework in California. And the scientists tell us that most groundwater aquifers are hydrologically connected to surface water, streams and rivers and lakes.

So surface water not being delivered to the Central Valley. Does that affect the basins, in your opinion?

It can, certainly, if there's a reduction, particularly to agricultural users of surface water flows through the state and federal projects or whatever.

Oftentimes that can be, you know, particularly surplus flows like we had two years ago can be, you can do flood, flood of the agricultural areas and allow Mother Nature to take its course with Percolation of that, that surface water overflows down into to replenish ground overdraft, overdraft, groundwater aquifers.

Thank you. And then a question for anyone that wants to enter. I'm going to reply to the good Senator from Santa Cruz's comment about two farmers using 70% of the water in that area. Isn't it true that they also own 70% of the land?

And if you take the small farmer versus the large farmer, and I hate to use that competition piece, but large farmers, these large farmers that have 70% of the land are actually using less water per acre feet than small farmers. Is that anyone's understanding or not?

I won't specifically talk about that, but I think what you're describing is really at the heart of some of the local decisions that GSAs have. Because every basin is different. The demographics, the land use, agriculture, and even the water supplies are very, very unique.

Which really gets to those difficult decisions on how to make those management decisions to bring the basin into sustainability, which is at the heart. So that's something from our standpoint, we want to honor the local control and local decision making, provided they're on track for compliance and achieving sustainability.

But those are challenges locally on how they navigate all those specifics in wind and basin. So that's not a direct answer, but that's sort of from our perspective, how we view those circumstances.

I guess from a farming perspective and somebody who represents farmland. If you have 70% of the land in a particular area and 30% is divided in between small farmers, obviously, obviously growing commodities on 70% of the land is going to use more water.

But it's not that they use more water per acre foot, it's that they just have 70% of the land and they're growing more commodities in that community.

Is it true that the other 30% of the water users or the local issues that are facing there, that 30% of other water users are divided up in smaller farmers and they're actually using more water per acre foot than the large farmers that were brought up by my colleague for, from Santa Cruz.

I can't speak specifically on, on that because that's, that's really a local GSA issue to kind of sort through.

It's my understanding, and I could be wrong, that Sigma is supposed to consider all water users equally and not pick winners and losers.

And I guess if, if there is not, and there's been talk about not having adjudication, if SGMA picks and says large water users have to stop or cut their demand which decreases the value of their property because obviously you can't grow food without water.

And smaller farmers are not required to reduce their per acre foot of water usage. And you eliminate the adjudication process. That's the only alleviation or alternative that people have if they disagree with the SGMA plan. Is that correct or not?

I'll answer some of it and I'm not an attorney so I'll not try to get into the legal piece.

But what you're describing again is at the heart of local decision making about given the types of agriculture, types of water uses and particularly from our standpoint what are the groundwater uses and users in that basin when they manage it to avoid undesirable results is what we're looking for.

So how local agencies navigate again the disparity and differences within, you know their water use in basins is local decisions. And I viewed groundwater sustainability plans as.

And the reason why it's local is you really looking at community values where the community is going to go with what water is available and make those local decisions not too dissimilar little than like a county General plan. They're charting out the course for the community and taking all the what you described into account.

And we want to keep that at the local level. Now for adjudications and GSPs, I know this will probably come up in a little bit but you know one thing we're looking at is that the foundation for sustainable groundwater management is the groundwater sustainability plan.

That's where the science is placed where all those basins that we've approved, we've determined formally that they've used the best available science. And with any scientific aspect there's going to be a range of perspectives but there's falling in the middle. Those judgments the basins did was the best available science, you know that was available.

So when they come out with a sustainable yield to address, you know, avoiding undesirable results for groundwater uses and users that's at the foundation of our approval. Now I'm not versed very detailed into adjudications but is a use to divide up allocate groundwater uses is appropriate.

I think that the actual kind of acknowledge the role of adjudications in gsps. I think the concerning thing that people have been talking about is how the adjudication process could potentially be used to undercut the future of sgma.

And for one example, if you come out using an adjudication to establish a different safe yield number what does that do with an approved basin? Now you know, people do have the right to object. Like if they don't think we're. Our determination was wrong because they didn't use the best science.

People have the right to do that or the decisions of the gsa. There's other legal avenues other than adjudication is probably more appropriate. I think that that's sort of the concerning aspect of. Of how the adjudication can be used for other things that could undercut and undermined approved plants.

Thank you. And we do have other Members with questions, so I'm gonna have to wrap you up if you have anything else.

I do. I have several. I mean, I represent the top three food producing counties in the world and my counties are very concerned about food production. I have questions about Prop 4 bond funds. When are they going to be rolled out? I have questions about.

And again, my colleague had to leave and he asked me to ask his questions too. I have specific questions for Ms. Leahy.

Do you want to pick one of those and start with that so that we can.

Pardon me.

Well, I was trying to figure out what they. So how about. Let me. Madam Chair.

Yes, thank you. So can you please pick a question and keep going because we do have other folks.

So I have questions about Prop 4 and how that money is going to be rolled out because there's a need for increasingly addressing the drinking water. I also have a question for Ms. Leahy. The difference between the GSP that implements groundwater pumping restriction that the court does determining water rights. How does that adjudication complement the GSP?

I have a concern about adjudications being removed from the process when the GSA specifically violates the, the rules of SGMA that was implemented for 11 years ago. There's a lot of farmers in my district.

Again, top three food producing counties of the world that have serious questions specifically because three of the counties have already been put into probation. Well, two. One is probably on its way if the hearing hadn't been extended to address because they were very close.

Water Board gave them an extension to be able to address the minimal concerns that were available. But they were moving towards a solution. And so there is. And then on the Qiama side of it, there's a series of questions there. There's questions about the subsidence issue that you had brought up, .

Mr Frank, regarding the sinking valley floor because of subsidence. 22 inches just in one year. How is the subsidence being addressed? Because that's a serious issue in the Central Valley. So there's a lot of questions that I'm not going to be able to ask because of the Chair's request to not ask those questions. But I would like time with you in my office to address these issues because they are significant issues, specifically our sinking valley floor because of subsidence .

So let the record show that the Chair asked you to speed up the questions, not not ask the questions. So I think it's really important. There were five questions there. If you would like to touch on those. We also have a second panel that touches on the Cuyama as well as other regional issues.

Just for clarity, this is only the first panel. We have another panel that covers some of the questions addressed.

I'd like to take all your responses, whichever response you'd like to give me.

I could start with the Prop 4 about the close to $400 million in groundwater funds that are available and we do have some other funds that are related. The intent is for us through the budget in appropriation this year to start the process for this next fiscal year to update the guidelines. And we do need before any solicitation goes out under Prop 4, we're going to need to update the guidelines, which were largely written for Prop 68.

So again, that's going to take and I think on probably historic levels, we're going to go through this process and get money ready for next year to be appropriated out for solicitation, which is I think going to be pretty fast compared to other bond issues. So this year it is going to be the development we do want.

Given the difficulty in getting bonds, it's going to be very important for us to go out to agencies to listen and understand like this next last round of Prop 4, what's the best way for guidance on how we do solicitations. So that's going to be the this process in this upcoming year.

And is that part of the Governor's Executive order for 23 and 25 on the for you, the agencies report back for specific changes that we made for recharge, rolling it out quicker. Is that part of that Proposition or not?

What I described is what's proposed in the Governor's Budget for this. But the other aspect is the internal work we're doing with the State Water Resources Control Board and Department of Fish and Wildlife on recharge temporary permits. And so there's been a lot of work over the last couple years trying to look at how to streamline that, particularly for local agencies implementing GSPs.

So there's been a lot of good progress and we're continually working in the governor's direction to improve that to achieve the target of half a million acre feet of permitted temporary water right permits every year. So, you know, we're still working through that, that process.

Yeah, thank you for the question. So I just wanted to clarify. So an adjudication is a determination of all of the rights. So that's a determination and a quantification of the rights.

Yes.

And then the Groundwater Sustainability Plan is a management plan for the basin. So those things are not inherently in conflict. I think what we're seeing and that is concerning is that if there is a different safe yield is usually what's used in a groundwater adjudication.

If there's a different safe yield number in the adjudication than the sustainable yield number in the Groundwater Sustainability Plan, then there's a potential conflict because the Groundwater Sustainability Agency is still required under the law to manage sustainably.

And then you have a court process that ends up in a decree that could have a watermaster and there's no guarantee in the law that the watermaster would be the Groundwater Sustainability Agency.

So we tried to harmonize that in SGMA in that the statute the year after, as was mentioned by Professor Frank, there was the Pavli Bill that added Chapter 12 to SGMA that said that the adjudication is not supposed to interfere with the ability of the Groundwater Sustainability Agency, the Department of Water Resources, or the State Water Resources Control Board to implement the act so sustainably.

That language is also put into the Code of Civil Procedure, which was the streamlining Bill for groundwater adjudications. It has language that reflects the same. But what we're seeing is that courts are, they don't feel that that language is strong enough, that it doesn't give them enough direction to defer to the Groundwater Sustainability Plan.

And so that's an issue that's been raised, is that there could be this potential disconnect. Now, SGMA, it says specifically, is not a determination of water rights. So a determination of water rights could actually help a Groundwater Sustainability Agency as it manages, because then it would help it in terms of, you know, allocations or knowing that there would be clarity under the law.

So as I said in the beginning, it's not that adjudications and stigma are necessarily going to be at odds, but that they can be at odds. Because what we're seeing now is there are ambiguities that the courts are identifying between what they need to do in order to avoid what they believe avoid a conflict, or what others may interpret the statute as saying they should be doing to avoid a conflict. So I hope that that helps.

It does a little bit. The reason why I asked you that question is because you made a statement that. My understanding is that SGMA was enacted and clearly states that Groundwater sustainability agencies or GSAs cannot determine groundwater rights.

But then you made a statement that we have to protect disadvantaged communities, small farmers, which are not sure what that looks like to intends to make things like that happen De minimis users.

And so I was just trying to follow up on what your thought was on that specific subject matter about GSPs and implementations of groundwater pumping restrictions and water rights. And so that's why I asked that question.

I really appreciate that, you know, groundwater adjudications are a very closed process. So that's a pay to play process. And only the people that can be involved in that process are the people who can afford to actually be in an adjudication. And they can last for decades.

There's lots of issues, of factual issues when you try to determine the amount of water. I think, as Professor Frank might have mentioned, you know, there's the more water or I don't. I think maybe it was actually. I'm sorry, Senator Laird might have mentioned.

But, you know, sometimes the more water you use, you know, and then the determination is going to be on that and you have a small farmer who's maybe using less water, and now they're only going to get a percentage of that. So an adjudication is a very closed process.

SGMA, on the other hand, includes all users and users. It's an open process and people can be involved. In fact, groundwater system sustainability agencies, they're required to have an interested persons list and to provide that information to those people. So when they're determining a sustainable yield number, they're actually including the community in that. That is very different than an adjudication. So I appreciate the question.

No, I do. And just to go back to that same comment that you just made about large farmers using more water, it's because they farm more acres of production. That's why they use more water.

I'm married to a man who was a farmer, 800 acres of rice up in Durham. And since he grew rice, he used a lot of water. So I would say, having been married to a farmer, it depends on what you're growing, you know, the amount of water that you're using, not necessarily just the acreage.

Agreed. But again, when we're talking about the Cuyama Valley specifically, which is a different panel, and I do appreciate that. And then again, there's another question I have for you. I'll give it to you later and then you can just provided in a writing response to me if that's acceptable to the chair. thank you.

Very Acceptable to the chair. And I think we don't want. We also just want to make sure we hear from other Members. And so certainly I think that we would want this not to be the only place for a conversation, but to have ongoing conversations. Do you want to wrap that up? You have a final comment?

Yeah, I'll offer. Senator Grove, you brought up a number of questions about subsidence and management, so maybe we can be with you and your, your staff and have.

That's a huge concern, 22 inches in one year in some cases. Thank you.

Thank you. And next we're going to go to Senator Laird.

I'm going to take the admonition of the chair seriously. So I had a whole series of questions. I'm going to reduce it to a question and a few comments and hold it for the next panel. And that is our staff report on Sigma and adjudication. Said some groundwater basins may be subject to legal adjudication.

How these adjudications will be resolved in the context of Sigma is unknown. That is what it says. And the only question is Professor Frank, you didn't comment on that. Do you have anything, you're an attorney, anything you'd like to say about.

Sure, sure. Focusing on the 2015 groundwater adjudication reform legislation that was enacted really had three goals. One, to make the court's groundwater adjudication process more efficient, more cost effective and hopefully resolving those disputes more quickly. Second, to ensure that that process is comprehensive and fair, but most importantly and directly responsive to your.

Your question to harmonize groundwater adjudications with Sigma, as has been mentioned, SGMA doesn't have. It's not a. The parameters of the SGMA process are quite different and more broad than groundwater adjudications, which just relate to how do you allocate a finite amount of groundwater among competing extractors and needs. So.

And the first and key element that has been implemented is requiring that the right hand to know what the left hand is doing.

If there's a SGMA process going on at the same time as a groundwater adjudication for a particular overdrafted basin, there's a requirement that the judge keep the SGMA officials apprised of the progress and the status of the groundwater adjudication and conversely that the GSA leadership keeps the court a prize.

Hopefully with the passage of time we can go beyond that, keeping everybody on the same page, informative exchange to more substantive collaboration between groundwater adjudications and and sgma.

The problem that's involved in some of the current disputes and litigation is that participants in the GSA process have started down the role of SGMA implementation and decided this is not meeting our expectations. So they file a new groundwater adjudication proceeding in the courts and that can, without careful coordination, that can require duplication of potential conflicts.

So that's going to take some time, in my opinion, to iron out those types of problems. But the legislation was well intended and has a lot of good provision and is designed to prevent or minimize any conflict between the Sigma process and an individual groundwater.

I think it tees up my comment and a comment on one of the other items I was going to ask about, and that is is that we you have the luxury of looking at the legal process and the administrative process and we are obligated sometimes to look at the political process and and in what I see is, is that one process is carried out, and then people believe they don't like the outcome, and they try politically to get another bite at the apple through another process.

And that's why trying to harmonize this in the best possible way would eliminate that. The other two, just comments in lieu of questions, and it tees off of that. One of them is that the process sort of requires some of the Sigma agencies to put together plans, but it's out of sequence with the politics sometimes.

And I think we'll hear about this in the next panel, where there's this big plan that puts forth projects of hundreds of millions of dollars before there's any analysis done of where it comes from, so that it then scares people and it starts a discussion down the road without the ability to have it done hand in hand with, okay, here's where there's grant funding, here's where rates that might even be existing rates, pay a lot of it off, et cetera.

And that worries me. The last thing. And the next panel is when I had another role, the issue was always there's not enough technical assistance for the Sigma agencies to conduct what they need to conduct and might not have the complete expertise to do.

And I know in the first years when I was involved in that, we were dropping lots of positions in the budget to do technical assistance. And I think rather than ask you, I'll ask one of the agencies, maybe in the next one, if they feel that's adequate or they feel like that still needs to be done. So in lieu of the questions, I'll just make those comments and look forward to the next panel.

Thank you, Senator Stern.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I guess I would dovetail with Senator Laird's question and maybe put my old Professor on the spot here.

Actually, talk about what it was like to have him as a student.

Oh, no, please don't.

It was actually a pleasure. A pleasure Senator.

You're clearly not. This is my new Professor. Former. Is there both in SGMA itself and in our. In the cleanup legislation or the additional legislation that Ms. Leahy mentioned, is there sort of. Is there a gap or a structure there that's maybe overly permissive or inadequately prescriptive about that interface between the adjudication process and the GSA process? Are we missing. You talked about ambiguity, but are we. Is there an incentive to stall? Potentially.

Yes, Potentially. I believe there is, particularly if the GSA process has more moving parts, has more parties. And I've been made aware of some groundwater extractors and users that have gotten impatient with that process, want certainty and want it more quickly than the SGMA process can provide. So they have commenced new groundwater adjudications, in some cases at least, to try and trump or preempt the the SGMA process.

That would be the operative verb, the T word.

Yeah, that's my concern is that if there's incentives out there for bad behavior or sort of presumption that somehow we're just going to cast aside, you know, forget just California law, sort of just all water law in General, or everything is just going to be sort of thrown to the wind that, you know, the major actors in these processes are going to exploit those ambiguities and then just wait it out.

But you know, to the Senator from Kern's County's point, hopefully that the gravity of that subsidence will sort of drive people to near term and better faith, hopefully good faith outcomes. So that'd be the hope.

And I would be my, maybe my ask of you all as you start looking at the Prop 4 implementation process, is how to design that carrot in a way that pulls that behavior back into the corners of that law and that that money can be a useful tool in that way. So that would be my request.

Thank you. Senator Allen.

Yeah, I just, I wanted to follow up a little bit more on this issue of the Executive orders on recharge. Yeah, I've just been reading about folks complaining about ambiguity, you know, with regards to the I know the Governor directed agencies to report back with specific changes that would make the recharge rolling out quicker. And I want to get your sense of how the agencies have been responding, how smooth that process has been, hiccups, barriers, challenges.

Yeah, thank you, Senator. I want to kind of split the recharge discussion into two pieces because we've been talking about a lot of apples and oranges and is sort of they're in one bucket and one is flood diversions, which is they can be allowed to do that if there's an imminent risk downstream to communities and divert off and recharge.

And that came up during the 2023 atmospheric river season. The Water Board had a policy that would allow people to do that without a water right, provided that it was protecting communities downstream from imminent risk and you could incidentally recharge.

And so that became subject of a governor's Executive order that kind of framed that out and put some parameters on what types of land. So we didn't want it on dairy land and other areas to protect water quality. There was issues with habitat.

So it framed it out and we saw some huge advancements on recharge and diversions, which was really good. But again, this is primarily health and safety to protect communities. There is good recharge that can occur from that. But again, it's not permitted. It's not a water right. It benefits the basin entirely if that happens.

So we've seen a lot of, you know, good reaction to that. And that can actually lead to agencies or landowners who want to then go to really where the foundation is on recharge. And that's the State Water Board's temporary water right permit process.

And that's the formal process that they put in Place in 2018 to start really advancing groundwater, groundwater recharge. They have 180 day and a five year permit. So we've been meeting and pretty much on an ongoing weekly basis to walk through the status of that. The Governor came out in 2022 with a hotter, drier strategy and targeted half a million acre feet per year of recharge. And that's been our target.

So we've actually been working the Department and CDFW and the board directly with these permittees to walk through the regulatory process, particularly if they're a local GSA, they have a grant from US public funds. You know, it's really incumbent upon us to make sure that those public funds for public agencies get put to use.

So we've been walking them through the process. We learned a lot. There was clarifications made on fish screens and others that was confusing out there. So the Water Board came out with a new Frequently Asked Questions this past fall. So there's been a lot of engagement with local agencies to follow the Water Board's 9020 process.

So, you know, again, there's been a lot of advancement. We've seen a big uptick in those permits. There's a lot of agencies that are sort of kind of poised to come in the process. But we do know there's, you know, additional improvements that need to be happening.

In one case, an example is you're going to spend, you know, funds for a fee. We really want people to come into the process in June or so for the next winter. It's usually December to March, but you don't know if it's going to rain that year. Right.

So people tend to wait to kind of see what's going to come up because you don't want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a permit and then have a dry year and then have to come back. So they wait, they come in late. There's sort of grumbling because they miss maybe a storm or two.

So that needs to get, you know, resolved and sort of giving agencies more certainty for what they get and flexibility. So those are some of the things we're dealing with, water right concerns also to protect those who have water rights from these permits. And so that's being navigated also.

So long answer is that yeah, there's, there's been some really great progress, I'd say the last two years, but there's a lot more we're contemplating, per the governor's Executive order, on improving the process.

Thank you.

I was going to say it's hard to add to that because Director Gosselin is sounding like a water right attorney. I would say that the two things that I wanted to focus on that you said that I think are really important that a lot of folks don't understand.

I'm sure you all do, but just the public in General, is that there is that two track process. So there was the speeding up of being able to divert flood flows, but you don't have a permit. So ordinarily you have to have a permit to divert an appropriative water right permit.

So the Governor's Executive order that then became statute allowed people to do that. There's a different track, which is you can get a permit, a streamlined permit, and then you would have a right.

And then all of those considerations that Director Gosselin raised, which is, you know, you have to make sure you're not injuring other senior water right holders, et cetera, that comes into play, but then you would have a right to the water. So I just wanted to kind of emphasize there's those. That's the difference in the two different tracks.

And then I just love to ask Professor Frank and I apologize if you spoke about this earlier. If you did, you could tell me that and we'll talk later. But, you know, what would be your vision for what the Legislature ought to do next in this space in terms of getting more aggressive on these issues?

On SGMA implementation?

No, but, but, but I think beyond it. Subsidence in General. You know, obviously SGMA was the product of a very difficult compromise, but an imperfect one. Where do you think we need to be looking as we, as we, as we look at the next steps?

I think, I think the big danger, I'll answer your question in the negative and then expand on it, is, well, these GSAs have been formed and ground groundwater sustainability plans have been developed and for the most part approved. And now we can all just wait for the next 20 years and see how it turns out.

I think that would be a critical mistake given the scope of the problem of groundwater aquifer overdrafting and all of the related instances.

So I would urge legislative bodies such as this Committee to do regular oversight hearings to track this and make sure that, you know, we can do adaptive management at the legislative and regulatory level as necessary to learn from this.

Make sure that we, that you can identify problems if and when they arise with GSA implementation at the local level and not have a situation where in 2040 or 2042, depending on the groundwater basin, we all wake up and, and there are problems and the goals have not been achieved.

But do you think that the oversight combined with strict adherence to the law is going to be enough to address the, the, the environmental infrastructural problems in the valley and throughout the state?

No, I don't think it's a, It's a panacea, but it's a good start. I think media. Getting media attention to follow this and track this would be helpful in terms of getting this issue out to the broader, broader communities, I guess.

Do you think we should be thinking more ambitious? Do you think we should be looking at additional changes to the law?

Well, I'm glad you asked that question. Yes, I think there are. Speaking solely for myself, I think there are some deficiencies in SGMA. One of them is that among all the other remedial steps, there's no requirement that an individual gsa, as part of its implementation of a plan, require gauging and reporting of groundwater extractions by individual users.

Satellite technology done by government or by others can do a lot in terms of seeing the overall health of a particular aquifer, but it's not good at tracking, tracking individual groundwater pumpers extractions and how that relates to the overdrafting problem.

But, but ironically, if you have a probationary gsa, that's, that's sent over to the Water Board and the Water Board has to, on an interim basis, take over the. There's a mandate in SGMA to require groundwater tracking groundwater data and reporting it to the, to the state agencies. I, so I, I've never quite understood that inconsistency.

And to quote a good friend who's in state government, you can't manage what you don't measure. And that's certainly true with respect to groundwater, in my opinion.

All right, Mr. Gosselin wanted to respond. Yeah, just I can quickly.

Yeah.

Do you have a quick comment that you look.

Yeah, I was just going to make one mention about you know, barriers, I think, in subsidence in particular, because we're dealing with addressing that. You're dealing with specific parcels of land that need to stop extracting. And that's a very difficult thing.

And I think as we go through, and I was going to save this for the other panel on the challenges we're dealing with pretty profound land use changes and loss of agricultural land in the San Joaquin Valley.

And the agencies that are going to have to carry this out at the local level going to need support for a local level.

And this gets outside of what the construct of the law is and what our business is on oversight, but as a General response to communities and the transition these communities have, are at the heart of challenges on implementing the steps they need to do.

So that's where I think multi benefit repurposing program, the Jobs first program with Go Biz and other sort of support mechanisms locally to deal with the economy and jobs and just for the future communities, is kind of really at the start right now because the changes in land use and loss of ag land is starting to occur.

So I just wanted to kind of put that up.

Thank you. I have one general question and that is, you know, as you think about these timelines that we've set, we've set 2040, 2042 as a timeline for our basins to reach sustainability, but we also, I mean, that's clicking, it's getting closer.

And some of us, I think, are also aware that we're learning more about the challenges maybe than less and the obstacles to maybe getting there. And perhaps thinking that 2040, 2042 is not that far away. What happens when we get there? And if some of these, you know, basins don't reach sustainability, are they automatically put into probation? It doesn't seem like that far away to not start thinking about this.

Yeah. With approved basins, as I said, we're conditionally considering them, conditionally approved. So our ongoing oversight of basins is going to continue, not just in their periodic update they submit every five years, but their annual reports, which does include estimated groundwater pumping, change in storage.

So we're going to be engaging on an ongoing basis on basins, whether they're on track or not, and whether basins are on track for sustainability. So if we're going to continue to do our job, we will not be waiting until the early 2000-40s to know whether we're successful.

We're going to start seeing, and we should expect seeing improvements to basins and starting the reduction of the overdraft upon implementation of these projects. So there are interim milestones that the basins set out every five years. That's going to be part of their periodic evaluation.

So the critically overdrafted basins have all submitted in their periodic evaluation that we're going to review that actually requires the Department to issue another determination. And it's not going to be the same breadth of sort of an initial plan review, but we're going to make a determination whether same call is, are they on track for sustainability?

You know, physically, is the basin improving conditions? And two, are they compliant? And if, and if they're not, they're going to run the pathway of going incomplete and potentially go to the state board well before 2040. So even the ones that we have approved that had to keep up momentum.

If they don't keep up momentum, they may run into issues with us. And again, we're going to try to work early on to keep basins on track and give them assistance where they need. But our oversight role is going to really even ramp up and evolve between now and the early 2000-40s.

Thank you. I think there was a misperception in the beginning of Sigma that folks could just go away and come back in 2040 and say whether or not they'd achieved sustainability. The act actually has annual reports that go to DWR. It has five year milestones.

And as Director Gosselin said, they have to be on a path to achieving sustainability or DWR could determine that they need to come to the State Water Board at any time.

So I think the initial response, which was in some of the plans, although people did remedy those plans, some of the plans were like, we get to 2039 and there's a miracle that, you know, that, that I think folks have really stepped away from that kind of approach and are looking realistically at the hard, really hard things to demand management, the projects and programs.

I'm happy to talk, I know in the interest of time, I can talk more when we talk about challenges, you know, triumphs and challenges about what we see coming down the road with respect to that as well.

Thank you. And I will just add, I think I want to echo something that my colleague from Santa Cruz talked about and that was said here, that, you know, there are a lot of impacts to communities. And one of the things that you said, Ms.

Leahy, is that the adjudication process has specifically become a pay to pay process. And I think that we can actually see that in different parts of the state, including, you know, areas that we've represented. And so it raises great concerns. We could probably have a whole whole conversation and a whole panel on hearing on adjudication.

But I don't want that to be lost, that some of what we are seeing has impacts on communities. And when I look at what happens to everyday folks, to a school district that is part of an adjudication, that is having to cut staff in order to be part of an adjudication, because they have one.

Well, I have great concerns that this was not what we intended it to be, but that we still have things to work out that merit, I think, a level of consideration beyond just who owns more, what size is whose and who it belongs to.

I think that when you have deep communities that are deeply impacted in really big ways, I think that that is part of what we should also consider broadly on all fronts. And so I will just say that there because we're going to talk a little bit more about it.

But I think that what my colleague from Santa Cruz brought up is a deeper question about what we are seeing and the imperfections in this process. So with that, I'm going to thank you and I'm going to call up the next one. We are we have a hard stop, you know, in about an hour and 15 minutes.

So I just want folks to know that we're going to have to speed up some of our presenters and also the public comment. So we're going to invite the next panel to come on up, please.

Would you like us to stay or would you like us to. You can stay. Yeah. And we can have others come up. So we're going to start with, you know, Mr. Gosselin and Ms. Leahy, each having just really brief. If you can keep it under five minutes, we've heard from you and we just need a brief part.

We're going to have the other panelists, we're going to give you no more than 10. We will absolutely cut you off and I apologize for that. But we do have many panelists here. So we're going to go ahead and start. Mr. Gosselin, and whatever you can do to expedite our comments would be great. Thanks.

I will not take five minutes. Just real quickly on the triumphs. I think the compliance commitment was just, you know, really amazing. The data acquisition, not just from the Department, but I think the local agencies, the monitoring and other data acquisition, the local agencies are using our assistance programs to even start thinking ahead on interbasin interaction.

Depletion of interconnected surface water collectively within basins on their own, which is exactly what we want. And again, project and management actions is really getting ramped up. We talked about the recharge efforts, which is absolutely considerable.

But I also want to point out the agencies are really doing a hard job developing demand reduction programs and these are uniquely faceted to. To local circumstances. The challenges, again, these are going to be very difficult local decisions. We're going to continue to provide support for them.

Community impacts from the loss of ag lands and just sort of. This transition is going to be rather difficult. I think we have a number of basins that have relatively small amounts of extraction and that creates an economies of scale for them to be able to carry forward. And then just funding generally for implementation, it's great.

We have Prop 4. There are a lot of agencies of Prop 218 fees. But as we saw the last solicitation we had, we had $187 million in Prop 68, we had $800 million in applications. So the need of implementation is great out there.

So I will, and I will tag team onto that and not repeat anything that was said. Although I agree with all of it. There is huge progress when we think about 80 plus basins out there and only seven referred to the State Water Resources Control Board. So that's huge progress.

I would also like to emphasize that many of the GSAs recognized that the significant depletion of groundwater was impacting communities, especially economically disadvantaged communities, others on shallow wells. And they realized that that would be significant and unreasonable unless they Develop mitigation. So they developed mitigation plans to try to address that.

And so it was still significant, but then it wasn't unreasonable. I think that is a tremendous success. So there's a lot to be proud of there. As we've already stated, some of the challenges are that maybe the basins, some of the basins were a little bit too optimistic regarding potential projects and management actions.

That's what Director Goslin has talked about. This is where the rubber is going to hit the road here. When we see if somebody is relying on a water right, they don't have and five other GSAs are relying on the same water right, that's probably not going to work out.

I think those five year reviews are going to show whether alternative approaches, including increased demand management, are necessary to bring the basins into balance.

And then this last subject we've already discussed, that is the adjudications piece and the disconnection, the disconnect, the potential disconnect between adjudications and the groundwater sustainability plans and whether folks are getting a second bite at the apple. So we've already covered all that. And with that elend.

Thank you. Next we're going to go to Javier Silva. He is on zoom, so we're going to bring him in. So he's a water operator from the Yokayo tribe.

Hi, good morning. Can you hear me? Good.

Yes, we can. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. And I'm just looking at myself too, so bear with me here. I apologize for not being able to attend in person. I reside in Fort Bragg, California. So I apologize once again for not being there. So I am Javier Silva. I am a Member of the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo.

I am of Noyo and Yokeo descent. So I am a Lino descendant of the from the Oko tribe, which is an unfairly recognized tribe in the Ukiah Valley. I am also a Tribal Technical Assistance Coordinator working with the North Coast Resource Partnership, formerly known as the IRWM for the North Coast.

So I am a water operator, have been for over 30 years working for my tribe and various other tribes in the North Coast. I do currently assist the Oko tribe, which is an unfairly recognized tribe, as I mentioned, owning their land since the 1880s in the UK Valley.

They are a, they are operating as a tribal community seeking federal recognition. But in the meantime, they are still managing their, their, their land there. They own and operate a public water system regulated by the State Water Board. So that requires having a water operator, certified water operator, which I am.

Which I'm volunteering to do and have been for the last 56 years for the tribe. And so with my familiarity with the law, the Sigma law, which I have been involved with since its enactment and involved with the state tribal Advisory Committee through four sigma for many years prior to the GSA's being formed.

So I did involve myself in the Ukiah Valley Groundwater Agency on the technical Advisory Committee there. The Ukiah Valley Groundwater Agency has, did include the seven tribes in the Ukiah Valley on their board. However, that was one seat and many of the tribes are concerned about representation there.

And so they'd like to revisit the amount of seats available on the board for the tribes in that, in that agency. I wanted to highlight a couple issues that I've come across being involved on the technical side and a little bit on the political side of the agency.

First and foremost, you know, capacity issues with regards to tribes. Tribes are and have been historically under or disadvantaged and underrepresented in many, many water management actions in our historical use areas. So this is a new, this is a new world where tribal and state and local relations get, or relationships get formed.

And so it's, it's, how do you say, it's become, it's become really difficult, especially with engaging the tribes where tribes are being asked to be engaged in a lot of other things as well. On top of just the groundwater, the surface water issues right now, the forest and fire issues that are going on.

So there's a lot of pulling at tribes every day. And so that requires the tribes to have to staff those requests. And usually that, you know, that'll, they prioritize what, what needs to be addressed first.

So one of the, so several issues with the process for developing the groundwater sustainable plans, we noticed that there wasn't an evaluation of tribal, tribal, subsistence, tribal, significant vegetation plants, medicines that were not looked at in developing the groundwater yield numbers.

And it was, it's one of those, the things that prevented the tribes from adequately commenting on in the Ukiah Valley plan. So the evaluation of what was provided was not given its thorough thought and receiving enough tribal information to help drive the numbers there in the Ukiah Valley.

Currently, I think through the, through the Department of Water Resources, they are going to receive facilitation support services that we helped draw, draw up, especially tribal engagement for the seven tribes in the, in the basin. And we're hoping that through this, that the tribes can be more engaged.

We know that the agency, the groundwater agency, you know, was also at a disadvantage of engaging the tribes and not having the adequate staff there to be able to adequately get the tribes involved. There. There are, there's, there are some other issues regarding the political and the technical side of the groundwater agency and the plan.

And I think it just hasn't been given its. In the UK Valley hasn't been given its thorough evaluation or. Yeah, it hasn't been given it's, you know, a thorough engagement of the tribes.

Having a seat at the table and meeting is one thing for one tribe, but that tribe also has to engage in representing tribes and the other tribal interests. So that puts a burden on that one individual or that that tribe to have to do that.

So that was something that the tribes in the region, in the basin are concerned with and would like to be addressed. The one thing that. So sigma doesn't apply to federal trust land as it's put.

However, like the Ukiah Valley, many of the trust lands are small enough where the there is an impact indirectly to trust land brown water from neighboring folks. But so while the tribes don't necessarily, aren't necessarily directly impacted that have trust land, there are some, there is some indirect impacts there.

Yokeo is a non fairly recognized tribe with feline. So they are directly impacted by water rates, well water rates that are going to be established by the agency. And the tribe has expressed their concern about that just being a De minimis user of water for the domestic water use.

So they, they have expressed their concern and would like to be considered exempt from any of those types of fees that are associated with the, the well use that they have. And I think that's primarily what I wanted to touch about. So thank you for listening and feel free to answer any questions.

Thank you very much, Mr. Silva. We will do questions and answers after everyone's had an opportunity on the panel. Next we're going to go to Lynn Carlisle, Executive Director of the Kemah Valley Family Resource Center.

Good morning, everyone. My slide presentation is coming up, but I'll just get going. My name is Lynn Carlisle. I'm. I'm the Executive Director of the Cuyama Valley Family Resource Center. We serve as a local hub of services in the valley.

Like other FRCs that operate in an agricultural community, the majority of those we serve are farm worker families. When I started working in the valley about 14 years ago, water was on everyone's minds. Small farmers and longtime residents knew the level of planting and pumping had increased dramatically over the last 20 years.

With the valley more or less planted wall to wall and acres and acres of overhead sprinklers. Thank you. Running in the middle of the summer when temperatures would hit 110 or more, just about everyone you talked to worried that kind of extraction couldn't go on forever.

Folks asked, what happens when the wells run dry and big growers pull up stakes and leave? What then? Back then, folks also knew they couldn't do much about it.

Around that time, local farmers and residents in our agency worked together to form a community Association that would help identify issues facing the valley and find resources to help with those issues. Groundwater was the number one concern by far.

Soon after SGMA happened for the first time, we thought there might be a chance not just to worry about, but truly understand the condition of the aquifer. And hearing the words local control, we hoped we might have a say in how groundwater, our only source of water, would be managed 10 years later.

Let's just say we've learned a lot and I'll share some of that with you today.

Thank you.

So, a little bit about the valley. We're roughly 1800 population. This is an isolated high desert valley. The closest towns are 30 miles to the east, 50 miles to the west. The entire basin is considered disadvantaged. The basin overlies four counties with most of the developed acreage in Santa Barbara County. All of it is unincorporated.

Here you can see historic loss of storage as represented by not unfamiliar steadily declining line with a slight leveling off in 2023 due to a wet year.

Our five year GSP update estimates that total pumping is 42,400 acre feet a year with sustainable yield at 16,800 acre feet, which means we need to cut pumping by roughly 60% to bring the basin into balance. As you can see by this map, the purple line is the Bulletin 118 boundary.

The majority of pumping takes place in the central part of the basin. It's taken us 10 years to get to this point and come to a tentative agreement on the amount of overall pumping and what sustainable yield might be. Persistent data gaps, conflicting data and continuing disagreement on the numbers are among our challenges.

Here we have one of the most graphic illustrations of historical use in the valley. This chart shows the percent of groundwater used by the top 40 pumpers from 1998 to 2023. The first three bars on the left represent the two largest pumpers. Bars 2 and 3 should be stacked as they represent the same entity.

Their combined extraction is 69% of all groundwater use basin wide. All of this pumping is taking place in the central part of the basin that you saw in the prior slide. As you can see by comparison, all the rest of the pumpers on this chart don't even come close.

In fact, when combined with the minimus users not shown here, we estimate that all users combined who pump under 100 acre feet per year represent maybe 2.42.5% of all pumping in the valley, with the remainder pumped by a handful of middle tier farm. 2.5% is well within the margin of error for our water model.

These are small farmers and ranchers. Many have been in the valley for generations. They are doing everything they can to conserve water, pulling out alfalfa and planting olives or pistachios, dry farming, updating irrigation practices. Clearly what they are not doing is significantly contributing to the critical overdraft in the basin.

A little about Governance in the Sigma Valley Governance of Sigma in the Valley the 11 Member board has representation from all four counties that the basin overlies with an extra seat and vote for Santa Barbara County. You'll note the representation of the Cuyama Basin Water District that last entry.

This is a district that was formed by the largest pumpers in the Valley for the express reason to serve on the gsa. Most of these entities have been farming in the valley for years, but never saw the need to form a water district until Sigma.

And while this district sought to have all five of its board Members have voting seats on the gsa, a year of negotiations resulted in a joint powers agreement with the proportional voting structure you see here.

Notably, the two largest punkers, those you saw in the prior slide serve on the board of the Agricultural Water District and on the GSA and they are the original plaintiffs in the adjudication.

While no small scale farmers or ranchers have a seat on the gsa, several serve on a Standing Advisory Committee, a body made up of locals to ostensibly advise the GSA on local conditions.

Although this Committee has helped to educate the community about each stage in the development of the gsp, its Recommendations to the GSA are largely ignored and here you can see that the GSA is also supported by a tech forum and ad hoc committees.

So we've covered basin conditions and governance, which leads us to where we are now with SGMA. We submitted our first DSP in 2020 as required for a critically overdrafted basin.

After receiving a deficiency letter in 2021, we filed a revised plan in 2022 and we've just submitted the five year periodic review of the GSP and public comment is now underway. The plan to reach sustainability is based on a glide path of pumping reductions in the central part of the basin that were to begin in 2023.

However, due to weather conditions and other factors, after 10 years of SGMA, no required pumping reductions have taken place. Not one drop of water has been cut as a result of SGMA in the Cuyama Valley to date.

Then, in the midst of SGMA implementation in 2021, the two largest pumpers in the valley filed for adjudication, petitioning the court to determine safe yield and set pumping allocations basin wide, not just in the central management area. In 2023, the GSA itself voted to become a party to the suit.

So how has SGMA implementation process impacted small pumpers? It's important to understand that engagement with the process to develop the GSP is a very heavy lift. Few small farmers have the resources to attend GSA and standing Advisory Committee meetings which often last more than six hours, or digest and understand the technical documents presented.

As you can see here, one of the most difficult impacts of SGMA has been financial. Particularly now that the basin is in adjudication, these financial impacts are causing extreme uncertainty for small scale pumpers.

Through this process we now know just how disproportionate water use has been in the valley for the past 25 years and how little small scale pumpers have contributed to the overdraft. Yet the largely size blind GSP requires all pumpers in the central management area to make the same cuts regardless of percent of groundwater used.

Further, farmers who may have come to the valley, say in the past 10 years are receiving far smaller pumping allocations because those allocations are based on historical use. One small farmer's story demonstrates this issue.

A family relocated to the valley and planted 38 acres of pistachios and 2 acres of lavender in 2015 before a glide path or a management area had ever been dreamed of. Based on neighboring farmers water use, he estimated needing 120 acre feet a year to establish and maintain his crops. Fast forward nine years.

And he now has the misfortune of having his farm included in the management area with the largest pumpers in the valley. Despite submitting a variance request to the gsa, he would now be required to begin pumping reductions at the same rate as those massive pumpers.

Worse yet, because his historical use was relatively recent, he was given an allocation of just 16.8 acre feet, which was less than 15% of what he actually needed. At our recent January meeting of the gsa, tearful family Members and and community Members turned out to plead with the GSA to reconsider this farmer's variance request.

After much discussion, the board voted to provide a one year variance of 120 acre feet. And for the first time in GSA's history, they would begin to consider developing policies that would take the GSP's impact on small farmers into account the very first time that ever been mentioned.

So we are grateful for this extraordinary act on the part of the GSA and we will support the development of these policies. But it shouldn't take tearful family Members and neighbors showing up at a GSA hearing on a cold January afternoon to secure a reprieve for one farmer.

We would suggest that considering the needs of small farmers and ranchers, who are certainly beneficial users, should be required in the GSP process.

The number of large pumpers is far exceeded by the number of small farmers in the Cuyama Basin, the majority of whom call the valley their home and all of whom depend on the sustainability of the basin, as is likely the case in many basins across the state.

Moving on to adjudication, it must be noted that without sgma, the Queima Basin would not now be in adjudication. We have about one more minute. The plaintiff's been pumping freely in the valleys for decades that never saw the need for adjudication.

And as has been mentioned, they didn't like what was going on with the GSP and therefore decided to turn to the courts. So you can see on this slide a few of the adjudication impacts on small scale pumpers.

As Senator Limone mentioned, our small school district, 175 students, two schools, is having to pay for legal representation about $30,000 to date, at a time when they're also having to lay off staff to balance their budget. And there are other impacts here that I've detailed on this slide.

So here's a non exhaustive list of what, a list of what We've learned after 10 years of state as a result of SGMA, we now have data that demonstrates a minimal impact the small scale pumpers have had on the basin's overdraft. Our local control likely means different things for different people, for our community.

As I said in my opening remarks, when SGMA started, folks thought it would give the community more of a say in how the basin is managed. That has not turned out to be the case.

Having done this work over the past 10 years with a group of dedicated stakeholders, we we realize that we have the most impact by speaking to groups such as you, to other organizations and to other agencies. We are grateful for those who labored long and hard to write and pass Sigma. We know it wasn't easy.

Despite its challenges, we want it to work. Our hope that this hearing and other events may lead to legislative action and or new guidance from DWR that reflect what you and others have heard from us, from those of us in the field. Thank you very much for the invitation to speak today.

Thank you so much Ms. Carlisle and thank you for getting here. It is hard to get here from Kuyama, so thank you. All right, next we have Pirot Harmon, General Manager of the Salinas Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency.

Thank you Chair Good morning Committee Member Staff I'm very excited for the opportunity to share my story. Our story, the GSA when I was getting ready for you today, I was thinking about the 11 years, 10 and a half years Sigma is old and where does that put us. The GSAs that are we teenagers now?

Are we getting there?

The growing pains we've gone through and kind of reflecting back for the area I come from and I represent Salinas Valley Basin, it's a corridor of 101 kind of going down from San Jose area towards San Luis Obispo also very, very aggressive, focused industry and it's almost like a mini state model because we are very diverse.

We are small, it's about 500,000 acres but very, very diverse. And I was kind of going back to the previous presenters and speakers here.

So we have ag, we have large ag, we have small ag, we have urban, we have some communities that are falling under the state water efficiency regulations and then we have rural residents, we have De minimis users, we have some of our land that is quite warm temperature wise and needs to use more water per acre.

And then we have coastal community that the ocean comes in, ocean fog, marine layer comes in and their needs are different. So what was kind of interesting, 2017 when the GSA was formed, there are different forms of how a GSA and GSP can be put in place.

And in my region it's one GSA and six sub basins, six plants and one gsa. When I started the job there a couple of years ago, I thought it was crazy making, like, who would come up with that? Why one agency with six plans?

But I'm seeing the wisdom now, and the biggest thing is the groundwater has always been managed. What was missing before SGMA was cohesive strategic groundwater management. Because all of the overlaying agencies, they were doing the best, but they had their own spheres of influence, they had their own service areas, they had their own ports.

And the role of those boards was to think about their own constituents. So the groundwater basins, they did not align with those overlaying jurisdictions. So that's what Sigma brought to the table, was really kind of look at that. This is what basin is. And there's something called water budget. Very similar to for all of your state budget.

You know, some years it's in surplus, some years in deficit. So how to manage that water budget the way that it's equitable, it's fair, and we can afford it. So there's the demand and supply side on both.

So you kind of have to be looking at, how can I bring in more water versus how do I use less water? Very similar to the money budget.

So that's the advantage of this one single GSA managing multiple sub basins, that we can truly develop and implement a comprehensive strategy and bring in all of the stakeholders and look at it, look at the issues we have through multiple perspectives, and then trying to come up with a solution that nobody's going to be 100% happy with.

But compromises need to be made and hopefully we can find that equilibrium and that sweet spot that most of the people walk away and are going to have faith in the future. The second piece, what I feel is unique to us is the efficiencies that our overhead, we are lean and mean.

We have one agency, one board of directors. We don't have six of them, because otherwise, if all of those plans had their own agencies, you would end up with six boards and six sets of staff. So I think we're really doing that right, looking at how can we do the same thing more efficiently and effectively.

And then stakeholders, through one agency, we can really provide the consistent platform for stakeholder participation. So they know where to come. They know that we are, we call ourselves, we are the convener, the collaborator, because the other agencies are still there.

So it's our role to be looking at where are the efficiencies, where are the synergies, where are some of the conflicts and kind of plan for them early on. So I think everybody's asked to talk about some challenges. I'll talk about those too.

So our biggest challenge is the same that we've heard here over and over and over. And the same you're going to be all dealing with is balancing the unique needs of the hydrogeologic characteristics of this diverse basin and different stakeholders. So one size does not fit all. We know that that's what Sigma language is.

So what do we do about that? Who is more important? How do we prioritize? How do we bring people to the table and make them realize this is not yours or mine, this is ours. If you're going to lose, we're going to lose because we're connected. That's what is beautiful about the groundwater.

So I think that that is a challenge, but we are working on it. And the other big piece is equitable fear of the cost. Projects are going to be expensive. So what are we going to do about it? What is equitable to take in terms of the sigma compliance cost?

And I have something, hopefully I get to how we're working with DWR on that. So there's sigma compliance cost.

That is before we get to implementing any of the projects, that's before we get to constructing anything is because the sigma layer of you must collect data, you must monitor the groundwater conditions, you must submit annual reports, you must have a board and that's a public body.

So you must have meetings and all of that Brown act that comes with it. So that costs money. And it's more. It's out of balance a little bit. For the smaller GSAs, the ones that are serving small basins, because they are number of the groundwater users they serve is smaller. So there's no economies of scale.

So it's just something that Paul and I, we've been kind of thinking about what can be done about that. Is it reasonable that medium priority basins. zero, and I have all of them too. So we have three medium, two high priority and one critically overdrafted. So we kind of have that somebody's one of.

I call them my kids. So they're all important. We are a big family. Some have greater needs, so I need to spend more time with them. But ultimately the family needs to come through this and. And all pieces of it have to be made whole. So what are urgent problems?

One that I have not heard here mentioning much because it does not exist in Central Valley is seawater intrusion.

It only happens in coastal communities or its access to the salty water and It's a kind of, I could compare it with the subsidence because subsidence happens because there's too much water taken out, extracted and then the land collapses.

What happens in the coastal communities, it does not collapse because the ocean water comes in and fills the void. But that's not drinkable usable water. So some of the recharge solutions, they don't work for us the same way as they work in the other parts of the state.

So we do have a solution that we have done some feasibility study. It comes with a very hefty price tag. We're not sure how the community can afford it, but we do have a solution.

Another piece that's kind of interesting for me is rural groundwater users because SGMA sets that the minimus users, there's a special category that, that they are kind of exempt from stigma people or groundwater users that use less than 2 acre feet per year for domestic purposes.

Those users are the most vulnerable, they are the most at risk because if something happens with the groundwater and levels start going down. They have the shallowest wells, they are typically disconnected and it's really, really hard to help them. But we've left them aside. So how do we bring them back into the conversations?

How do we make sure that their needs are met? And we are planning for their future too. So we're doing something that I think is really cool. We are developing a pilot program for rural, rural residential water efficiency because they don't have it.

The state has been doing, has been dealing with conservation and making efficient use of water a way of life for decades. But not for rural residents, just for urban. So it's time to bring them along. And let me see one more. I was thinking about the SGMA timeline.

We have 14 and a half years left when the critical attracted basins have to be sustainable. That means there's going to be some sort of bottleneck.

We've all been studying and collecting more data and then if we get to that now the projects are ready to be designed and CEQA and then construction, does the state have, do we all have bandwidth to implement, to construct those projects at the same time across the state and then two years later the high priority basins will come.

See my, see my time is with your time.

Thank you for that awareness, much appreciated. Thank you Ms. Herman. And finally we are going to hear from Mr. Arshdeep Singh, President of the Punjabi American Growers Group who has a PowerPoint I believe for us. And so you have 10 minutes and we will time you. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Madam Chair and the Committee for Giving me the chance to speak. Please forgive me for my language. If it goes here and there. This is my first time and I'm just a grower. You have to understand. Right. I grow myself in Fresno County.

Okay.

Just to give you the mainly I will mainly talk about the challenges. That doesn't mean like there's nothing good in Sigma. There's so many good things about Sigma which will. I will touch base little bit in my presentation. For today's presentation there's one acknowledgement.

I will do it in the beginning and quickly go through what Punjabi American growers group is in a few seconds. Then mainly I want to talk about the challenges and how we see Sigma after 1011 years of the Sigma and then Sigma impacts and some potential solution or recommendations. At least that's what we see.

Of course we do not have the access to all the data which you guys have. But these are the things we think will work and help us out in the longer run. Right. And at the end is the conclusion acknowledgement. Yes.

We extend our deepest appreciation to our tribal nations of California, the original stewards of these lands and where we do farm today.

We honor their lasting connection to the land and recognize their essential role in safeguarding its health and productivity for the future generations which we are taking benefit now to be honest, a little bit about the organization.

It's a non profit organization and it has a regular structure like any other organization with directors and executives and we have bylaws and we follow the laws as we written it down. Unofficially. We started working in the Central Valley in 2018. Officially we registered with state and federal in 2020 as nonprofit.

When we started the key focus area was to basically, you know, if I have to put everything in word like in one line, it was like to keep the small scale family growers in the business, right. Whatever they needed that time, we will provide them.

And one big thing was the language barrier which we've seen it with other communities too. And so we were able to provide all the information in Punjabi whenever it was needed.

The reason I'm bringing these key focus area when we started is the key technical knowledge center optimized the complete farming operation, reduce the farm input, cost and everything. You will see there's nothing mentioned here on the water because we did not expect that we would be only working in 20242025.

Our whole focus will be on the water like providing the growers help how to find the water. Right. And to be honest, I will even mention that we are Even providing growers assistance how to file the bankruptcies now. Okay, so this is the situation we are. I spend most of my time in San Joaquin Valley.

Although we do have Members from Chico to Grapevine. We have 425 Members and majority are in San Joaquin Valley. Right. Those are the six basins which State Water Resource Control Board and DWR mentioned. Still have troubles in the GSPs. Right. What SGMA is, of course, if we have to see on a bigger picture, right?

As from the grower. I'm talking only about from the grower side. We know California is very vast. All the basins are different. Hydrology, geography, everything is very different. Right? To come up with the one framework which will be make everybody happy. It's not possible. We understand that part. So what we got it I think is very good.

To be honest, we don't have any as a growers. We do not have too many problem with the law itself, right? The Sigma, the framework itself. Of course you have some feedbacks here and there, but overall you will accept it with the flying color. You will say.

And in fact the people who put it together, you will appreciate their work. What they did to put everything in one framework. And our concerns, the challenges comes after the framework. I consider, to be honest, I even highlighted on my presentation there are two words, Outreach and implementation. I think those are total disaster. They are failure.

Since day one, we were not given the information on time that this is what is coming. In 2022 we had around membership count was a little over 200. We did a survey ourselves and we found 90% of our growers heard the word Sigma after 2020. Okay. CSC Water did a survey recently, Paul and everybody.

We all participated in that. Similar findings are coming from those surveys. Right? So we did miss on outreach and I consider myself on that side. I consider myself as an ag leader and all of us as the leaders. We were not able to give information to the growers which we knew going to get affected with it.

In 2017, when we start putting the GSPs together, we knew which land will have water issues. Of course, we did not know the exact numbers, but we knew these are the problematic areas. Right?

But if you see that the almond boom basically happened around the same time the banks were giving us money left and right to put the trees on the ground. We have growers who put the trees on the ground in 201920182020 right? And banks appraised their land. They gave them the development loans, then operational loans.

And because banks were seeing that land $30,000 on an acre. Three years later, nothing happened. Right? The only thing happened is the Sigma comes into an implementation. Now that land is worth $10,000 an acre and now is the time to pay back that loan. And of course Covid didn't help us with the commodity prices.

Now we are in a worst case possible scenario. That's why it is really. I think the damage is already done on the outreach. Right? But what we needed to.

Even now if, let's say if I am a grower in the San Joaquin Valley and I have water issues, I own the White Land and State Water Resource Control Board or my local GSA's told me, you only have that much water. And I knew I cannot farm my whole land with that much water.

So where should I go? Like I literally have nobody assigned to us to help us. It's not like at Department I can go, I can call somebody for help. Of course there are bits and pieces here and there to help us. For example, the land refurbishing program, whatever we call it, right?

And DWR have some Ta systems on that, but those are peanuts as compared to the problems we have. Just to put in a perspective, like if we're talking about only a Madeira basin, 100,000 acres based on the GSP is at risk now and they got 10 million in MLRP to fix that problem.

It's a $3 billion problem and we are trying to fix it with a $10 million. And out of 10 million, I went to the workshop. 3 million is going into the administrative cost. Only the 7 is going to the growers. So those things are not helping us on a bigger scale.

Of course every penny counts when we try to look for a help. But though we need to be aggressive, I think on the land which we're going to leave out. So other point I want to mention is there's no financial assistance to any of the growers. How will they.

Like, what can they do if they get into this trouble? Like, is there any help they can call and say, okay, these are your options, you can do it. There's nothing like that. Last year I went to the UC Davis.

In fact, some of us were there in school of law and that's the first time I heard multiple times from different people's mouths that 1 to 1.5 million acres is at risk. Right. When we say 1 to 1.5 million acres, it's not in California. Basically that is between Churchill and Grapevine.

Approximately we have 4.5 million acres of ag land in that area and 1.5 is at risk or 1 million, whatever the number is. Right. We can see those.

One minute, one minute. Thank you.

Whatever that is. Right. But that much impact will basically kill all those communities there, including us. Right. What we are looking for is the same aggressiveness people are showing in implementation of Sigma. We should show the same aggressiveness to provide the plans for the land which won't have water. Okay, I'm going to skip a couple of things.

I want to go to the last one, what we recommend. I'm still an optimistic person. Right. And we still think there's a solution. Right. One of the biggest issue was since we failed on the outreach so we caught off guard in the implementation. So we are thinking we were not given any time to make any changes.

We do the permanent crops. If you want to cut my water, I want to cut my water. It will take a year just to make minor changes. So if the implementation is in a ramp up phases we might not have this big of an issue. But that's not the case. Right. So we are thinking if some solutions.

I am personally I am thinking if we can assign the state Bill 100 which is like solar, putting solar, that will help us a lot on the white line. How are we going to combine that to the Sigma? I don't know. I mean I'm not expert on that.

We need to force the state authorities more focused on the alternative crops. We should have a plan basically for that land which going to go out of business. Business. Right. Or investing in technology. There are technologies which are already going to help you to save 20 to 30% of the water.

But right now the growers cannot invest in that. So maybe we can take CDFA's help. They always provide the grants and they all have the infrastructure, etc. But there should be programs to help these growers or help that land. I don't want to see a land later like right now.

The white land is not in the one corner. Some white lands are in the middle of the farming land. I don't want to farm on my land next to a white land later on where there's nothing. The tumbleweed, the dust and everything are going to come. We don't have a plan for that to be honest right now.

Right. But we are asking, we are just asking for the plan and help and assistance for those growers who are going to get affected.

Perfect. And I do appreciate that you have ended on recommendations and possible solutions. I think that that's a. An important ending. Members, do we have any questions or comments for this panel, none. Senator Grove, would you like to kick? I know she does, and I want to hear Senator Grove's voice.

I just. Thank you, Madam Chair. No one else in this room is going to get this. But. But in my community, my Punjabi community calls me Tataka, so thought that would be funny for you. You understand that I do appreciate the testimony and I understand that there are.

I appreciate you bringing solutions forward at the end of your comments because I think that's important. I have concerns, same concerns on school districts which you addressed in the, the, the statements that you made. Different than the chairs. The chairs. We have the same goal, I guess, just different ways of getting there.

We have a difference of opinion on that. One of the things that I worry about is without allocation of water to the landowners that are in that area, their property tax values are dropping, like plummeting, and therefore that creates a decrease in funding to the school districts because they're funded by property taxes.

And when the value decreases, there's a problem there. So I think that should hopefully be addressed in some of these conversations. I am concerned about the adjudication cost. I'd like to see those invoices. I'd like the name of that school and I'd like to see the invoice on the adjudication costs that those schools have paid.

If you could provide that to my office, I'd really appreciate it. I appreciate your thoughtfulness in this whole conversation and the diversity that you have in your specific area. I thought we had problems in the Central Valley and then you bring in things that I'd never even heard about.

So I appreciate the information that you provided to the board or to the dais. And I do think there needs to be an outreach program developed specifically for the Punjabi and limited English speaking communities.

Because I have a lot of Punjabi farmers in my district and sometimes it's their children that are translating some of that technical information that goes to the actual individual that's participating in the process. And other than that, Madam Chair, thank you for letting me ask or make a statement.

Thank you. We don't have any more Members, so I guess that I will pose a question, you know, for any maybe two panelists, just given the time. You know, we talk sometimes about disadvantaged communities and that means a lot of different things to, you know, a lot of different people.

But also in statute, just to be clear, some statutes say it's one thing, other statues say it's another. But thinking from your perspective, you know, what would appropriate representation look like, you know, on GSAs, but also, what's meaningful Engagement. And those are not always the same thing. Representation. Right.

On an official, you know, part of an official group, but also engagement, like, what does that look like? So whether, if, if we think disadvantaged communities are those who live in a certain region, those who have small farms, what does that look like? And so I'm just curious. It's open to any two panelists.

I don't know who wants to answer.

Maybe I'll kick it off. I think on governance, we've seen sort of a wide range of how basins decided to organize themselves, including whether they have advisory committees or not, or technical committees are not an engagement. And that was really at the heart of the law.

And we've heard and we've gotten good comment letters from communities, which we do take into account and evaluate, but we keep focused on irregardless of how the agencies are set up, the tasks they have at evaluating all groundwater uses and users, and avoiding undesirable results is the key.

So we want to keep focused on their outcomes and how they conduct their business. But again, it is at the heart of considering all groundwater uses and users and then particularly taking a look at the high bar that's set on community engagement, which is in the statute beyond what's required in the Brown Act.

And then there's particular communities, disadvantaged communities, and others that may need outreach and engagement. And we provide guidance, documents and others on engagement with communities, tribal engagement. So that's hard work, you know, but that's really sort of the effort we're putting forward with local GSAs. So beyond that, I don't know.

So I have two thoughts. Engagement, and it's two big pieces. One is actually providing information in a easily reachable manner, and the other one is receiving information. So providing information. I think we have much more resources because we are living in the 21st century and we are, you know, Silicon Valley is right here.

So the information goes to everyone. You know, it doesn't matter who you are. Everybody has this. So can we translate this very technical concepts that we operate in into stories that people can actually relate? We can. We have to do better than that.

Putting it into not only text and here is a board packet, but more about what does it mean to me. There needs to be moving pictures. Part of that. I'm telling you that if we can make it into a game, gamification, especially Sigma, is 50 years. We are building a future for our kids.

And the kids are very, very comfortable getting the information a different way that we do. So I think that's one way. How can we be more creative of telling the stories? The engagement is go to where people are. Don't expect them to come to you.

You need to find where they already gather and go and have the dialogue in those places.

Thank you.

Any final comments? I would just say that engagement in concept is great. And I think that in our.

With our gsa, there has been efforts to engage the disadvantaged community, but in reality, it's very difficult to expect someone who, you know, they're working in the fields all day for six days a week, and on Sunday they're going to come to a GSA meeting and try to understand what's going on.

We have to really be mindful of the burden that it puts on families. And I think that there have been events that would. They would tick the box and say that was engagement, but it wasn't done in two languages. Maybe there was an interpreter in the back of the room.

We have farm workers who feel very uncomfortable coming to meetings when the person who owns the farm that they're working on is sitting there at the dais and directing the meeting.

So there's a lot of sensitivities that have not been followed and not been created, and the GSA has not, in our community, has not really put effort or resources toward making a more equitable engagement.

Thank you.

I would add that unfortunately, the current political climate, we have seen that there's been fear in communities to come forward and to engage as well. So that's something we've struggled with.

Thank you. Since everybody speak, I will speak too. I think that's the one reason why we failed in outreach, to be honest, because we couldn't connect to the growers or the communities there at the ground level. Right. We cannot expect that the growers or the communities going to come to the workshops.

We have to find a way to go to the fields and tell them. And also we have to be really careful when we do the translation and stuff. I can speak about the Punjabi, the language.

I do translation is one thing, but you have to put in a way in a language that the growers speak so they can understand it. Generally, when this information goes to them, they read it and then they throw it rather to feel. Get them engaged in that process. That's the one thing missing.

I'm not saying the outreach failed on one end. It's failed from the other end, too, because the people were not aware to basically get that information.

Thank you. So I want to thank you all for your presentation, for the information you've given. I think it's evident that this is not long enough. I mean, we probably need to keep. Continue to have this. But I also want to recognize that, you know, the Senator from Kern said something that I think is true.

We share similar concerns. We may not share how to get to a solution for those concerns, but there is, no matter what part, I feel like there are similarities in the concerns we have. And I think that there is, you know, we want to make our laws work.

We want them to work, but we're also realizing that, you know, as, you know, 11 years into implementation, there are challenges that our communities are facing, whether you're, you know, in the Central Valley, on the coast, whether, you know, there's these challenges that we're trying to, you know, solve for and help our communities solve for so that the law does work, so that the law considers a lot of the things that I think you've been unified in terms of your messaging, that one size does not fit all, that we need to go to communities.

Right. That we need to also understand that there are different topographies that impact the kinds of conversations that we are having, and that in the end, we don't want to pick winners and losers. We want everyone to win and are trying to develop these laws about how we get everyone to win.

In a state with 58 counties, more than 480 cities, you know, I mean, it's just. It's a lot. So I do appreciate it, and I think that we will continue to have those conversation. So thank you for. For. For your comments, Senator Stern. We're about to open it up to public. Okay. All right. And one. Yes, one.

Just one comment. What does it look like? I don't think this State Water Resources Control Board has a desire to take these things over. I don't. That's just my opinion based on conversations that I've had. But what does it look like if the state has to take over the majority of these basins? Because there's.

I mean, what does it look like? Just briefly.

I agree. That is not the goal. So local management is the goal. I don't think we're looking at the state taking over a majority of basins. You know, there's only seven basins that have been referred to the State Water Resources Control Board so far.

What the State Water Board would do, it is called an interim plan because it is meant to be temporary. The goal is always to work with the locals in order to remedy the deficiencies and to make the basin sustainability sustainable.

And it's interesting because the sustainability of the basin is actually to help those that are in the basin. Sigma is an interesting law. It's not that we think groundwater is beautiful. You know, it's. It's underground. It's really keeping the resource there for those that use it.

And so what the State Water Board would be doing would be imposing an interim plan, potentially, if it got to that. And as I've said, there would be at least a year continuously working with the GSA or GSAs in order to remedy their deficiencies.

And then there would be an interim plan, which would likely be demand management, because, frankly, the board, it's unlikely the board would have the bandwidth to engage in projects and programs in a basin.

Again, that would hopefully be temporary so that the basin could then get its project and management actions together in order and its demand management in order to get itself back into sustainability. So the entire goal is for there to be a temporary support of the basin.

I know it might not feel like support, but the idea is to have a temporary support bringing it into sustainability. And in looking at an interim plan, you know, the State Water Board would be looking to see are there groundwater sustainability plants in a basin that are working?

And that would really be where the board would likely look to see what it needs to sort of, you know, spread over onto parts of the basin that maybe aren't where it's not working. So, again, it would be looking locally to see what's working. So that. I hope that answers the question.

Thank you. And again, just thank you all for being here. It's not easy to take time off from your everyday work, but also to get here. So very much appreciate the comments. So thank you for that.

We're going to move to public comment, and I do want to recognize that we did get two public comment letters ahead of time, and that is from Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority, as well as Kern County Supervisor Philip Peters. And so I just want that to go on record.

So we are going to invite folks to come up. We are going to give you one minute, so if you can please state your name and your affiliation. And then you will have one minute, and then we will have to cut folks off. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Chair Limon and Members, I'm Matteo Kushner. I'm a policy advocate at Community Water Center. We want to. I just want to give an appreciation of the inclusion of drinking water voices on today's panels. These voices need to be prioritized, as in Sigma implementation, given that impacted communities were vital for advocating for the human right to water in Sigma.

So 11 ongoing challenge is that climate change is making California's hydrology more volatile. And we feel that the DWR has not gone far enough to require planning for climate extremes, which will be necessary to ensure groundwater agencies are planning for drought, flooding and recharge.

We urge you all to require local groundwater agencies to consider climate extremes in planning. This must happen alongside stopping over pumping. As Paul Gosselin from the DWR has said, farmers are not going to be able to recharge their way out of groundwater depletion.

We urge the state to maintain and expedite efforts to identify appropriate recharge sites without cutting corners when it comes to environmental review. This can be done by implementing and funding SB659 Ashby from 2023. Lastly, we ask that you maintain SGMA programs as funding priorities.

As cuts in federal funding place pressure on the state budget and Prop 4, it's vital that the millions of Californians.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. It's still morning. Ryan O'Jackson with the Regional Water Authority and Sacramento Groundwater Authority. I do want to say thank you for convening this hearing. It's very critical and important that we have this conversation. I want to sort of start where you ended on your close, Chair Lamone, that we can all be winners. Like in.

In groundwater management, we can all be winners. And I'm very optimistic on that because here in the Sacramento region, our groundwater basin is sustainable and our groundwater levels are increasing. It is very possible to do now. It's hard. We heard a lot about how it's hard. I would argue though that.

And this is what I want to leave you with, that Sigma itself is working very well. It. It's the suite of additional laws around groundwater management that we need to make improvements on. SGMA is. Is. Is a very good structure for setting up our regulatory framework for how we manage groundwater. Thank you. Thanks. I appreciate that.

And just. I. Again, I'll just close with. But we can do more in the surrounding body of law. Thanks.

Thank you.

What does that mean?

The we can do more. So we have a follow up. So how about we let. We will. Yeah, go ahead. Come on up.

Hello. Christopher Malwood, third year law student with the UC Davis School of Law Small Farmer Water Justice Clinic. Thank you Chair Limone and Committee Members. It is great to see UC Davis represented well. And thank you to the clinic's partners, Lynn Carlisle and Arshdeep Singh.

Since formation in July 2024, the small farm Illegal clinic has assisted individual small farmers in a myriad of ways related to Sigma and groundwater adjudications. Our work provides a slice into the struggles faced by small farmers.

For example, in Merced County Basin, we are working to prevent the devaluation of land belonging to a small farmer in Yolo County Basin. We are working on an appeal to the GSA and the County Board of Supervisors regarding the placement of a large well that is pumping impacting a small farmer in the Kiama Basin.

We help secure an increase in groundwater allocation through a variance for a small farmer. These individual efforts are combined with our collective effort to provide legal knowledge to small farmers so they have the opportunity to make their voices heard in front of the gsa, DWR, the State Board, the courts and even their own attorneys.

Thank you.

And I will follow up with a letter describing potential actions including introduce bills this session. Thank you.

Thank you. It goes fast, y'all. The one minute goes fast.

Good afternoon, My name is Mike Lyons. I'm the Director of Policy for Audubon California. I really do appreciate this hearing and all the speakers. I just wanted to flag an issue that I know the agencies are very well aware of, which is the implementation of SGMA is having an adverse impact on the last remaining managed wetlands.

And wetlands that are, particularly in the Central Valley, lost 95% of our wetland habitat in the state. A steep decline in our biodiversity in the state. Once upon a time we had 35 to 40 million waterfowl just moving through California. Now we have closer to 6 to 8 million songbirds and shorebirds and the like.

Managed wetlands were not adequately considered in many of the GSPs. We've tried for years to get that. But the loss that's going to happen as the cuts apply to managed wetlands, like other users, is the last. Some of the last wetlands that are left in the state will dry up and they won't come back.

So I just wanted to highlight the significant concern that's here and flag that people continue to work on it. Thank you again.

Thank you. And I know that was a Bill that was vetoed, so.

Yeah.

Thank you. Madam Chair. Mark Fenstermaker with comments on behalf of the Sonoma Valley and Petaluma Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agencies. Just want to highlight something that Ms. Harmon raised, which is that there is one aspect of SGMA that is one size fits all, which is how we administer implement sgma.

Whether it's brown at compliance, whether it's, whether it's the one year annual plans, whether it's monitoring. This is having a. This is going to have a detrimental effect on our GSAs as we don't have the economies of scale. We are those small GSAs, there are a number of these around the state pumping less than 10,000 acre feet.

So this, this standard cost that that comes with implementing Sigma, we just cannot spread that out across as many users as many of the large GSAs have. We've been having a number of conversations with Mr. Golin and his team.

We are very appreciative of that and we look forward to trying to develop some solutions, not just on how do we get more funding, but how do we deal with some of the costs. So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good morning, chair, Members of the Committee, thank you so much for having a hearing on Sigma. It's critical to our state and good to see the attention that it's getting. Earlier in the hearing in the first panel, Senator Allen asked like, what can the Legislature do next?

And I agreed with Professor Frank's response to do more hearings like this, but also wanted to add an additional recommendation to think about your budget appropriations as you consider the budget this year.

We were fortunate to have $200 million available for the multi benefit land repurposing program, which is designed to support the land transition challenges that both Deputy Director Gosselin and Mr. Singh were noting. And the Governor's Budget proposes $12 million and we can move faster than that. This is an already existing program.

We don't need a year and a half to develop guidelines. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair and Members. Soren Nelson, senior advocate at the Association of California Water Agencies. If you were around when SGMA was passed, you're aware that aqua was one of the principal architects and supporters of the laws. It was early originally conceived and we continue to be supporters.

There's a lot to react to here today and I really appreciate the work of staff to put this together.

I'll just say that from the beginning of SGMA, there was doubt that the agencies would even be formed in time that they would hit the deadlines to submit their plans in time that the State Water Board would have to take over. And there was this big boogeyman and very little of that has come to pass.

The locals have really stepped up and done an excellent job. As you're thinking about how to support Sigma and how we move into the home stretch or the middle part here, what they need is time. They really haven't had very much. The plans were just submitted, just approved.

So I would continue to trust the locals to do what they do best, which is what they have already been doing. So thank you for your time and your support.

Thank you.

Thank you. Chair and Members, really appreciate you having the hearing today. I'm going to be speaking on behalf of Dr. Natalie Escobeda Garcia, who is a policy manager at Leadership Council for Justice and accountability. Oftentimes in the water justice movement, we say agua es Vida, water is life.

We have community Members and leaders that have been organizing for decades and they won't stop organizing because they want to make sure that drinking water is protected for their communities now and in the future. And so I just want to be clear about what can Legislature do.

The Legislature can protect funding that is going to necessary technical assistance programs that are supporting underrepresented communities and also making sure that translation services are provided and that meaningful engagement is a big part of SGMA implementation. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. So I want to thank all those who gave public comment. We are going to move to the closing now, and so I want to see if any of our colleagues have any final thoughts or comments. Senator from Bakersfield.

Senator, I just want to thank the panel for participating today. I know I've been talking quite a bit with the chair about this and how it's impacting communities not only in the Central Valley, but beyond. And so I really appreciate you all taking the time and I hope that we. It's.

It's, you know, to what the chair said, it's. We all want to kind of fix the problems and continue to work on this. And I applaud the chair for having this hearing today. Thank you. And I look forward to continue hearing from you all.