Assembly Standing Committee on Water, Parks, and Wildlife

We'll get started. Good morning everyone. Welcome water people. I think Assemblymember Arambula for being here and look forward to some follow up as we see that we're not getting water the same way we used to. Certainly the snowpack does not yield what it used to yield. It's only at 66% right now.

So that means it becomes even more important that we capture those deluges of water when they come in the atmospheric rivers. And so I like to say there's that phrase make hay while the sun is shining. This is capture rainwater while the rain is raining.

And so I'm really excited to see where we've been and if there's been any flexibility along the way so that folks can get the water when it's, when it's a coming. So with that I if you have some opening remarks I would welcome them and then we'll get started with our witnesses.

Thank you Madam Chair and Members for allowing me to be here today. This opportunity to have oversight on a bill that I chaptered and authored in 2019, ABC 658 is quite important to make sure that we have the oversight and opportunity to seek for improvements.

I also want to thank the speaker for allowing us to have these hearings and focusing on bills that require oversight. It's important for us to be here. I authored this Bill after one of the worst droughts in California history that occurred between 2017 and 2020.

During that time we were listening to climatologists who were predicting larger droughts to occur and thus the importance for us to catch rainwater when it was available. The best way to minimize damage during those times is to make sure we're capturing water during high flow periods.

This coupled with sgma provides us an opportunity to ensure that as the landscapes are changing that we do our best to create sustainability in the long run.

By authoring this legislation, we allowed for beneficial use of that water in the future and want to make sure we're doing all we can to learn from the initial experience and find ways to make improvements going forward.

Our Bill created a temporary permit for five years and so I'm interested in evaluating the difference between the 180 day permit as well as the Executive order which was applied by Governor Newsom recently to ensure that we are allowing for the use of these five year permits to make sure that we can do the conveyance that's necessary.

As I'm looking towards the implementation, I'm also really wanting to hear how we can make improvements going forward. If there are investments that need to be made to reduce barriers for organizations. And again, just want to thank you Madam Chair for holding this hearing today.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Assembly Member Arambula. So let's get started with our representatives from the State Water Resources Control Board, the primary agency that's been involved with implementing AB658. Come tell us about five year permits. Good morning.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Members of the Committee, it's an honor to join you this morning. My name is Joaquin Esquivel. I'm Chair of the State Water Resources Control Board. The State Water Board is a five Member board. We, along with our nine regional water quality control boards oversee water quality regulation in the state of California.

Additionally, the State Water Board administers water rights and of about a decade ago, the division of drinking water was transferred over to the State Water Board and also oversee the nearly 3,000 community water systems in the state and set regulations on drinking water.

All of that is to accomplish our mission to protect, enhance and restore the state's water resources for current and future generations. In administering water rights, the Board is responsible for protecting existing senior water right holders, ensuring environmental safeguards and supporting statewide water management goals.

Importantly, many groundwater sustainability agencies or GSAs are looking towards groundwater recharge as a way to meet their 2040 SGMA milestones. When passed in 2019, AB658 gave the board authority to issue five year temporary permits for recharge through a simplified process.

This authority has been an essential tool for capturing high flows during the rainy season and storing them underground when they where they will not be lost to evaporation. Taking a step back, the State Board first developed temporary permits in the water rights space to respond to the mid-90s drought.

There a need to quickly be able to potentially develop new supplies Here. The water rights process is a long and expensive and complicated one and so the ability to have a temporary permit was really critical.

We then improved on those in 2015 when we lowered the cost for temporary permits and really saw the push and the need for groundwater recharge temporary permits specifically. Overall, since 2015 we have permitted 51 temporary recharge permits. Most of these have been for 180 day permits with the five year permits only being available starting in 2020.

It took a couple of years for the five year permits to ramp up in part because of the record drought that we were in the middle of from 2020 to 2022. And so the first five year permit was actually approved in 2023 just before the most recent storms.

The board issued the last of nine recharge permits for this season, authorizing over 43,000 acre feet of underground storage enough water for over 128,000 households for a year. This includes 75 year permits. That's the highest number that we've issued since they became available in 2020. Two additional five year permits from 2023 actually remain active.

That's why we have the full seven. These permits were issued across the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Shasta, and Scott river watersheds, underscoring their importance statewide. These permits matter because they allow permittees to recharge for five consecutive years without reapplying, creating consistency and allowing applicants to plan and invest in related projects with confidence.

More significantly, the five year permits create more flexibility to respond to year to year changes in hydrology. The primary driver in whether groundwater recharge occurs is not the presence or absence of a permit, but rather is whether or not it rains.

The longer duration enables permittees to adapt to the weather whiplash that comes with worsening climate change, taking advantage of larger volumes of water when they are available. For many reasons, groundwater is a key to our water security in the future. Groundwater recharge does not have the same constraints associated with surface water reservoirs.

Recharge projects can be developed very quickly, can utilize existing land, generally have lower environmental impacts, and have significantly lower management and operation needs. Recharge projects can also help reduce flood risk in some areas, which can benefit both water storage as well as health and safety of downstream communities.

Groundwater sustainability agencies agree and are banking on recharge projects to allow them to meet their goals at the local level. Temporary permits offer an opportunity to test out pilot projects and concepts before investing in more significant infrastructure and costs that go along with a permanent water right.

This provides valuable operational environmental data over multiple hydrologic cycles and can inform larger investments in groundwater recharge and storage. As a Siskiyou county farmer permittee noted, the five year structure provides consistency, encompasses periods of dryness and wetness, and and allows us to learn things we cannot anticipate today. So we've improved operationally here.

The Board's streamlined approach has cut permit approval time to roughly four months, down from up to a year.

A key aspect of this approach is recognizing that when extremely high flow events occur, there is often more water in the system than claimed by water rights and therefore we can streamline the Board's process to assess water availability, which ensures water existing water users are not harmed.

As a reminder, without some kind of process to examine existing water uses, someone upstream of Sacramento or American Rivers could start taking flows that the city currently relies on to bring water to taps in this Capitol building. That is why it's important to have a process to determine how much water is actually available for new uses.

Lower fleet fees in the simplified process have made recharge more accessible, especially for GSAs in high and medium priority basins seeking to recharge and reduce groundwater and increase groundwater resilience.

Permits also include essential safeguards such as recharge only on fallow or dormant ag lands, avoidance of dairylands, and other measures to protect water quality and avoid harm to fish and wildlife and communities. The Board's work on groundwater recharge is in alignment with a broader set of administrative and and legislative actions.

The Administration's Water Supply Strategy, published during the peak of the most recent record of drought in August of 22, identifies a series of actions intended to build up California's water supply and make it more resilient to long term climate change and future dry conditions.

The Water Supply Strategy identified the future loss of more than 8 million acre feet of water under climate change scenarios due to hotter and drier conditions, but also noted that dry conditions would be punctuated by wetter and intense storms.

The Water Supply Strategy identified a goal of expanding groundwater recharge capacity by an additional 500,000 acre feet to help capture high flow and flood events to balance dry conditions in the future. This goal is only possible because of the pathway established by AB658 and the ability for the Board to move quickly in permitting medium term recharge projects.

In 2025, the Legislature passed SB 72, which was the first major overhaul of the California Water plan in decades. Governor Newsom signed SB 72 in October of 2025.

Of note, the legislation updated the Water Code to require new planning components in the Water Plan and directs the Department of Water Resources to identify how California can secure an additional 9 million acre feet of water by 2040. This is an ambitious but important metric.

It further aligns with the State Water Supply Strategy by identifying how California will respond to a hotter, drier future and sets California on a path to start that planning now rather than responding to future emergencies in an ad hoc approach. Five year temporary permits are an important tool to meet this ambitious goal.

The Department of Water Resources recently published a series of reports on managed aquifer recharge for tributaries to the San Joaquin and Delta, noting that more advanced weather forecasting and changes to how reservoir flood curves are managed could make significant volumes of water available during high float events.

These are often referred to as ferromar or forecast informed reservoir operation Managed aquifer recharge. The Board's work is streamlining in streamlining temporary permit processes in part relying on AB658 pathways will be an important tool to test out furomar projects now just a space of where the Legislature could potentially improve and strengthen the program.

You know the five year implementation we've learned improvements would definitely be useful. One would be around the flexibility and start times for five year permits. Currently the five year clock begins immediately once the permit is issued.

Allowing up to two years to begin the five year operational period would greatly benefit permittees facing construction timelines or obtaining new equipment like pumps. Drought years with little to no recharge or simply the time required to obtain the implement and implement a permit. This flexibility would increase participation and maximize recharge when conditions allow.

Additionally suggestion would be codification of CEQA exemptions. The Board's current ability to expedite recharge permits depends on CEQA exemptions established through existing Executive orders. These exemptions have been instrumental in accelerating permit review, but Executive orders can expire under the existing CEQA suspensions. Tribal and environmental concerns have not been ignored.

The Board still evaluates potential impacts to water rights holders, fish and wildlife, water quality and cultural resources before issuing a permit.

The Water Code requires the Board to notice these temporary permits for public input and objection and specifically requires the Board to conduct multi part tests a multi part test to evaluate the impact of a proposed temporary diversion.

These requirements are independent of ceqa, meaning the Board must go through them through this rigorous analysis of these issues prior to issuing a permit. Water code Section 1433.1, which was created by A.B. 658, requires the board to make specific findings.

Those findings include that the water may be diverted and used without injury to any lawful user of water that regulated flows are sufficient below the point of diversion to meet in stream flow requirements and water quality objectives that there is suitable accounting and reporting methodology.

Diversions can only occur without a reasonable effect on fish and wildlife and other in stream uses. The diversion is also required to be consistent with and adopted an interim groundwater sustainability plan if applicable. Other parts of AB658 requires consultation with CDFW in addition to the Board's required findings.

Furthermore, staff is still Staff still conduct technical review and consult with agencies and tribes when concerns are raised and permits include protective provisions to ensure concerns are mitigated. Codifying these exemptions would provide greater stability for both permittees and the Board, ensuring continued efficiency in processing future applications.

We also have a robust 11 year track record showing that the Board and its partner agencies can safely and responsibly consider environmental and other CEQA related issues when issuing temporary recharge permits without the financial and timeline requirements that CEQA entails.

Existing requirements in the Water Code, for example, already require robust analysis of environmental public benefit impacts and are duplicative of additional CEQA requirement. These exemptions streamline paperwork, not environmental protections. Under a full CEQA process, the requirement to conduct a CEQA analysis would fall to the local agency applying for the five year permit.

That agency would need to prepare environmental documents such as initial studies or environmental impact reports. That process requires formal scoping alternatives analysis and extended public review periods which can take many months or years.

Because stormwater recharge opportunities are weather dependent and short lived, these timelines would likely mean many projects miss the opportunity to capture water in wet years. As a result, fewer recharge permits would be issued and less water would be stored underground, making it harder for basins to meet underground sustainability goals.

Public noticing and common opportunities also allow for robust public participation which can identify challenges. Last I'll say Modernizing and Public participation processes Public Participation processes as part of improvements. You know today the Board must resolve every public objection in full before a permit can be issued.

This process can cause significant delays for permit approval and associated recharge projects during time sensitive wet periods. Transitioning from a public objection model to a public comment model would still allow Members of the public to raise concerns but would not halt permit issuance while each issue is resolved.

The Board would continue to address any real and substantive concerns raised in comments and the petition process would remain a crucial backstop for stakeholders who believe a permit should be reconsidered. This shift would meaningfully increase the state's ability to capture water when it is available.

In closing, AB658 and the authority to issue five year temporary permits have been a genuine success. They are essential part of California's broader effort to build groundwater reserves, support SGMA implementation and better prepare for climate driven extremes.

With targeted adjustments, greater timing flexibility and codified CEQA exemptions similar to those we have already successfully implemented by Executive order and a streamlined and meaningful public input process, the Board could further enhance the effectiveness of this tool and help communities secure more water for the next drought period. Thank you Madam Chair. Look forward to the discussion here.

Thank you so much. Any questions from the from the Members here? Assemblymember Gonzalez.

Thank you Madam Chair. Good to see you. Good to see you. Assembly Member we share the same desert region with family I just have a few questions to ask to gain a little bit more clarity on what you presented, what I'm reading, and the gap in between.

Would you say, you know, first of all, great job from going from 12 months to four to five. That's, that's, that's significant, right? There's no, no doubt about that. That is a significant change. Would you say that there's an opportunity to streamline this even more?

Yes, I think we do have an opportunity to do better. I covered some suggestions, but I would note a lot of the work is taken up by protests. The water rights system affords a lot of due process to water right holders. That's important. The challenge becomes when especially these temporary permits are trying to be issued.

Working through all those protests can take a lot of time. Additionally, what takes up a good amount of time in the process is water availability.

Currently, each application pays consultants a good deal of money to come up with the water availability analysis that helps support the application to show that the project won't injure other water right holders, that it can be done with importantly protections in mind as well, that it's not going to harm fish and wildlife.

That water availability analysis, though, that again shows that you're not going to harm other water right holders is done with each application and sometimes a little differently.

And so I know that we have focused a good bit on trying to see if we can't be doing that water availability more on our own so that it's presented more as a rebuttable presumption, if you will, that people can take, not have to spend a lot of money to redo and importantly create consistency in the watershed and how water availability is done and seen for these permits.

So all that to say that there is an opportunity to continue to, to improve these permits. And I think we're, we're very open to ensuring that we support that being the case.

So, you know, just kind of on that same thread, if there is an opportunity to, to streamline it more or make it more efficient outside of the, the external factors, right, Internally, internal processes, what could you implement within this next year to make it even more internally more efficient?

And what type of timelines can you, can you talk to with that? You know, in the next three months we can do this, the next nine months we could do that. And by the 12 months we can do the next thing, you know, without key performance indicators.

You know, it's just kind of like we're, we're trying to tune up a car without any stats.

Yeah, I Appreciate that. What I would note is that it really depends on which watershed you're talking about. Obviously, we have a very large state, and so some of the work to improve processes internally, say, around water availability, are more advanced in some watersheds than others.

I think of the Russian river watershed as a place where there is a supply demand assessment that we've done and talk about better doing water availability insofar as timelines and sort of implementing those in the various watersheds here, you know, more a default water availability analysis.

I'd have to go back to our staff to see where we are necessarily on some of that work. But I would note, I think the place that we have some of the shorter timelines in activating some of that would be, say, like in the Russian river watershed.

But a lot of the work, and we know the critically overdrafted basins that we have and that we need to focus on are in the San Joaquin or in the Central Valley.

So what I can't commit to you in this exact moment is when similar work that we're piloting, say in the Russian river watershed, might be able to be applied to these other watersheds. But it's something we can follow up with your office and the rest of the Committee on.

Yeah, I think that would be interesting for. I mean, great Bill. I think it's a, it's a good, good start to what we need to accomplish. Right there is from a water world, we get to hear all the, all the interesting perspectives across. Right. There are a lot of interest. There's a lot of perspectives.

There's this thought of we're at a cliff and we're at this emergency place and we don't have water. Then there's the thought process of it's a management of water issue. So there's multiple perspectives out there.

What I'm looking at this first year that I was here was trying to define and measure what we do here in the Legislature. So that way those who are enacting those pieces can, can. Can do it effectively, efficiently, so on and so forth.

So now in this second year, I'm like, okay, what else can we do to help this process along or what can we stop doing to get out of the way in? My final question is, you know, I'm a firm believer in centralized planning, decentralized execution. Right.

So is there a way from the local level, ministerial level, to allow more flexibility for them to move on a dime? Right. Hey, we have this flood movement. We have this X, Y and Z. Whatever happened, that's.

That's really that helps those local instead of having to know call you, get you on the on the line, get your team on the line. They can be a little bit more flexible in the movement to help the greater picture. What are your thoughts on on that opportunity?

Yeah, I appreciate that. What we've been fortunate for is a lot of learning certainly in these last years, both through the drought, this last turn of the drought that we had. But then also 2023 which was a big water year and what we so just kind of taking a step back.

When we talk about groundwater recharge, there's kind of two main paths that you can really take. You can use the water rights system to develop to have a temporary permit or more permanent permit. But importantly what that allows you to do is to take that water back out at a later time.

You essentially are able to lay claim to those drops and have then a legal right to then pull that back out at a later moment. The other so that's the more certain path and it's a path that folks want because it allows you to build infrastructure.

You have certainty and the ability to take that water back out at a later time. The other path that we developed here in the height the drought and especially in 2023 when we saw such a huge water year is the ability to recharge without a permit.

And that is currently allowed through Executive order and was codified through law. And that route is when flows on a system are at flood flows still to be determined. Like what exactly is that flood flow threshold in many of the watersheds. But it allows you to then simply take the water off the system.

You don't have to apply for a permit, you notify the state board after the activity. And so to your point is a far more responsive and quicker way you can recharge.

The challenge and or the limitation we'll say on that path is that you don't then have a right to pull those drops back out after you've recharged them. They accrue to the basin, they accrue to the balance of the groundwater basins supplies, but don't give you ownership or right. So.

But we've continued to focus on that as a tool, an important one that acknowledges when we're in a flood state we want people to be taking water off the system.

There's too much, it is overwhelming and we don't want folks to have to go through a whole ministerial process in order to get approval for that because you know it's a flood emergency at that point. So just note that there is that other path. That path, again, doesn't require a permit.

And the distinction between the two is the ability, in the end, to lay claim to those drops.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Gallagher.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I think according to the analysis we've looked at here, so far, under the 180 day permit, we've been able to divert 58,000 acre feet and then under the five year only 671 acre feet so far.

And so in terms of like performance metrics of trying to, again, I think a simple concept that I think we all agree upon that hey, when we have excess water, storm water that we can take off of the system and store, you know, let's make sure we're taking advantage of that opportunity.

And we've had actually a lot of those opportunities in recent years where we have excess storm waters where we say, hey, let's take that water and store it either in the ground or even in above ground water storage situations. But it just seems like under those numbers, that's not really getting at what we really want.

I mean, would you agree with that?

Yeah, those numbers may be a breakdown for this water year's temporary permits. I'll make sure that we maybe get the full volume and breakdown of the 51 permits that we have adopted since 2015. Some of those 180 day.

I only note that because I know in 2023, you know, that really big water year we actually authorized 1.2 million acre feet of recharge, 500,000 acre feet of that was for the Central Valley project and adjustment to their permit.

And then, you know, 600,000 acre feet of that or so should have been for temporary permits that year and what was authorized for that year alone.

So did it get there?

So I think that's an important note. What we authorize isn't what ends up getting recharged. And I think that's because importantly it's the permits may authorize a certain amount, but it's really again the water year and the opportunity to recharge that actually dictates what gets recharged in that year. So yeah, I appreciate that.

A lot of what I hear is that the process is still very, is too, too uncertain for a lot of districts to go through all the process and the cost quite frankly of applying and because they're not sure that even after they give the information that they're going to get the permit.

And so, you know, one of them is that there ends up being pretty costly reviews required by water board staff.

And so one of my questions was, you know, so for instance, you know, when an applicant applies for a permit under the 9020 method, in what instances is the state board requiring a more complex Water analysis akin to a WAA or even requiring a full multi year analysis.

Those are really complex processes that take a lot of time investigation. And then so a lot of districts are saying, man, if I have to go through and do all of that, I'm just not going to do it.

How often are you guys requiring that and is there a way to maybe just not have to do that involved of a process when again we're talking about excess flows.

When folks are truly staying within the 90:20 rule, it is a lot more streamlined. I think what we're finding is that a lot of applications are coming in under that threshold and meaning that it is requiring a more comprehensive sort of analysis, especially around injury to other water right holders.

That's a lot of sometimes where a lot of the time is spent. So if folks are using the 9020 rule, there is a more streamlined path.

We're finding a lot of folks for recharge are wanting to come in under that, wanting to take flows from the system that maybe aren't that peak peak that again we're making easy for folks to be able to pull off.

And then my last question is, you brought up Russian river and I think that's actually a really important one. Right now we're talking about taking down a dam, Pillsbury Lake, that affects that watershed, that's holding back a lot of water that is then ultimately used throughout that system.

If we lose that storage facility and we have what is basically like intermittent flows, very tough conditions where, hey, you're very reliant on the water that you get that year and whether or not you captured it, I do worry and I don't know if you guys have looked into this.

As far as I seen here, we don't have a, you know, Sonoma County Water Agency or on the Russian river, anybody applying for getting these permits. So far at least I haven't seen one that has been approved.

You lose that water source that's storing this water, where are you going to get the water to actually put it in the ground when you're totally reliant on sort of a limited precipitation and water flows in these systems? You see what I mean?

Like where's the pocket of water that you're going to be able to actually divert and how's that going to impact people's water availability in that basin? It's a serious concern.

I appreciate those concerns.

I know that Sonoma county, the folks in the upper watershed as well, Ukiah and others have been working with Round Valley and all have a very robust discussion Going on to try to assess and understand what does the regime look, how do we continue to ensure that both the Russian river watershed, but also the Ile river are able to thrive into the future?

So I know there is a space where those conversations are happening.

Yeah, but I mean, has there been any analysis of that? Like if we lose, you know, the acre feet that are right now held behind, you know, in Pillsbury, where's the water going to come from to actually send it to a recharge basin?

There's still water in the system and still an opportunity to recharge. I don't think the removal of the dam will stop the ability to recharge.

I don't see how you could say that. I mean, has there been an analysis by the water board of that?

We're in the middle of doing, I think a 401 water quality certification for the project. So that analysis is ongoing.

Okay. We don't have it yet though, or?

It would be outside the scope of what I'm prepared to talk to you about here. Assemblymember Gallagher.

Then. Okay. Sorry, last thing. Sorry, Madam Chair. It seems like a lot of them are now taking advantage of the governor's order that allows them essentially just to bypass you. Right. And to get, you know, permits. And it seems like that's actually resulted in a lot more water that's been able to be recharged.

The flood flows provisions, again, under emergency flood conditions are important. I think they're an important tool to complement the official water rights processes that we have here as well. So why should we have them both?

Should we just codify that the Executive order and not go through the water board? I believe it has.

We already. It has been codified in law. Okay, so, you know, it's such a good idea.

It's already happened.

Well, I'm just saying, like, you know. But then why have this process at all?

Well, again, as I explained the distinction between the flood flows recharge provisions and the temporary groundwater right permits, it allows you to actually pull the water back out. It creates ownership essentially through the water rights process.

Whereas any recharge that's done through emergency flood flows, it accrues to the basin, which is really important, but it doesn't accrue to a specific individual that can then pull that water back out at a later date.

Right, I see that benefit. But right now on that five year permit, we got 671 acre feet of water. That's not a lot. And I think, you know, if we're really talking about doing this you know, that number's got to improve substantially, and especially when we're talking about losing, you know, potentially above ground storage.

To me, you need both agree. That's why SITES is such a great idea. It's taking excess flows off. Fortunately.

Apologize, Assemblymember, I act as a judge on the water rights side, and we're under ex parte, so can't discuss that project here with you all.

You can't discuss sites? Not at all. Okay. Yeah. Well, it's essential to groundwater is. My point is that, you know, you have to have above ground storage so that then you can actually take that water and then send it to a groundwater basin recharge project. They both work in conjunction with each other.

So I feel like it's got to have this comprehensive view of how you do that and then obviously improving, you know, the certainty of those systems and getting the permit so that you can then actually maximize the amount of water that we can recharge.

I completely agree, and I'm glad that there is work ongoing with the Department of Water Resources on just that issue.

And so far as really looking at our existing infrastructure, understanding how we can more conjunctively manage that so that it is benefiting recharge projects, we are using the water rights system, if you will, which we've been overdue as a state, to really implement these goals that we have.

And I think that by, you know, staying wedded closer to water rights, really understanding it, and marrying those project operations and diversions, I think we do have a chance to get better at all of this work at a scale into the years ahead. So I really appreciate those points. Thank you, Assemblymember. Thank you,

Assemblymember Arambula.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to thank my colleagues from across the aisle. This is a bipartisan issue where we're trying to maximize flows, and it was a carefully crafted Solution back in 2019. Each time you pass legislation, it's timestamped for that period. And there's been a lot that's happened since then.

And so I'm looking forward to the conversation that we'll have. And good to see you, Tocayo. For those that don't know, that means when you share the same first name and so appreciate that opportunity to see you.

I'm going to begin my questions with the water availability assessments and trying to understand if the state board can get more information on water availability that would help us to streamline the assessment. Specifically, is there an opportunity for us to do a statewide water availability, a 30 year look back along each of the water systems.

I understand there's quite a few, but would that help the permittees to analyze or streamline the process? And what would you estimate a cost could be for such a project like that?

Really appreciate that. I think so, yes, it would be, you know, to try to do statewide would be a huge undertaking. It would come at a good cost. I, you know, I do have folks here, our chief deputy, Eric Ekdahl and Amanda Montgomery from water Rights.

If they, they want to try to chime in on a guess on the cost. It's not like we have one ready and prepared, but it is costly. But the important thing is it's already costly and it's costly right now.

For water right holders who have to undertake that water availability analyses onto their own and pay great consultants out there, but ultimately replicate that cost over and over and over again individually for each permit.

I think there are great savings to be able to really do that analysis and still allow water right holders to come in with their own. If they feel, you know, it's not up to snuff. They have some other data, it wouldn't preclude them from that.

But I think it would at least create a better basis and a better rational basis for a lot of the groundwater recharge requests and desires that are happening in various watersheds. So I think it can help.

It would be costly and I think important to, you know, maybe focus on a few key watersheds and then expand from there.

I agree. If we're prioritizing on basins that historically have been overdrafted or areas, we may be able to focus on the best ways to store.

While I agree with my colleague that surface water storage is important, I do believe the best place to store water is below ground where you then don't have evaporation, as well as the opportunity for those water right holders to pull it out when were having droughts or other periods.

But I want to kind of dig in a little more. Do the permittees have to reassess that water availability assessment again? If they're looking for another five years, can they simply update the last five years rather than having to do a 30 year look back or how does that process work?

Yes, I think when it comes to reapplication of permits, there is an opportunity to reuse a lot of the information that was already developed in the prior permit.

And I think to the extent I know our folks are doing their best, ultimately when it comes to if a permit comes back in and it's the same exact permit, it shouldn't take the same amount of time to do the analysis.

And I think that we're definitely desiring to make sure that we're not overanalyzing, but you know, doing our job well there. And so I think that to your point, again, when, when a new permit, a permit that's already been processed is coming back through, it can largely be based on a lot of the previous data.

So I guess what I'm trying to drill in is five years will have passed since their last permit, which then means they have 25 years of information. But do they simply do the last five years to add onto it or do they have to do an entire 30 year?

I don't think they have to do an entire 30 year. No. I believe. And if I'm wrong, folks can make sure and adjust.

Madam Chair, I believe there's an opportunity here to work with our public institutions of higher education to be able to help us to analyze the basins as well as how to create that statewide water availability assessment that would increase the permittees opportunities to have applications be successful. I'd like to now turn to the DFW consultation.

Many of the permittees have to get a lake and stream bed alteration agreement per the conditions of their permit. Is this necessary if they're using their existing infrastructure? And why is it?

I wouldn't really be able to speak to CDFW's considerations and so would hold off on speaking for CDFW. But know that we do work very closely with them on these projects and continue to develop the technical expertise with them to try to move things quicker.

It'd be nice to eventually hear from CDFW on how and why it's necessary for us to consult with them if they're using their existing infrastructure. Again, may help us to move forward.

I'm hoping you can comment on why there are some agencies who are opting to apply for the 180 day permit and just continue to apply for that 180 day permit rather than using the five year permit. Are you able to comment on that?

That's a good question. I'm not. I don't have any explicit information as to why folks would necessarily favor the 180 day. It may.

I'd be just speculating, truly knowing that ultimately the five year window is helpful because again, you don't know if it's going to end up being a water year type or enough in the system hydrologically to be able to use the permit. So the 180 day permits are a little harder, but they're season by season obviously.

So one would hope the five year permits are a little more folks are incentivized to go through them because if you're going to go through that whole process may as well have something that gives you a little more certainty.

It may be a longer process in some cases or more work required and maybe why folks still default to the 180.

A big reason why we focused on the 5 year time window is that currently it's approximately 7 out of 10 years or drought years and so there's a good chance within that five year window that you'll have a wet year and thus be able to utilize it.

Right.

I I want to go towards your suggestions on improvements and elevate them to Madam Chair as an opportunity for this Committee to work on it. But I really felt that codifying the CEQA exemptions was a very good suggestion. It was not one we were able to get through in the previous iteration of this legislation.

But the body has changed and the times have changed and it may be appropriate for us to look at what the Governor has done as a way to do that. And I also liked your two year implementation window for the opportunity for us to build conveyance rather than to have it eat into their five years.

Ultimately that will allow them time to make sure they can maximize the opportunity and believe that was a very good suggestion as well as the public objection versus public reconsideration. You've been able to work through thus far the objections and believe that's a very significant move forward.

I believe all three of those changes would really help us to increase the opportunity for permittees to apply. I do just want to Highlight While there's nine permits that were agreed upon, there were I think 3,000 water rights holders that you mentioned in your testimony.

Those are a number of water systems, but there's thousands of water right holders. Thousands. Thousands.

At some point we're not creating enough opportunities for them. And so I'll finalize my questions regarding cost. How currently has the state supported the existing permittees in finalizing that permanent process?

Are there opportunities for us to look towards funding that may be available such as in Prop 4 for SGMA that may allow us to create a grants program to streamline this. It's oftentimes tens of thousands of dollars for water right holders to do this.

But there were, if memory serves me correctly, 200 million that was available for SGMA implementation and there's quite a bit of correlation here. Is there an opportunity for us to look at a grant program that would allow permittees to lower costs and thus reduce barriers.

Thank you, Assemblymember. I appreciate that suggestion. I believe those Sustainable Groundwater Management act dollars over at the Department of Water Resources. But we have robust discussion and work ongoing with DWR around recharge, around SGMA implement. And so it's something we can definitely take back and understand how best we financially support the work as well.

I would just highlight the goal from the Governor in 2022 was for us to do 500,000 acre feet of recharge. And I believe you said you've authorized 43,000ft thus far.

That's just for this water year. Doesn't encompass the prior water years, but

yeah, we haven't done much Recharge Prior to this year. And so I'm just highlighting there's still an opportunity for us to get to that 5,000 and it most likely comes from reducing barriers, reducing costs and that water availability assessment. Thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to ask questions and great to see you again.

Good to see you. Assembler Member thank you, Member Bennett.

Thank you, Madam Chair. There we go. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to point out a few things about this groundwater recharge and I appreciate the efforts for us to try to increase the amount of recharge that we do. And that is state Water board has a challenging task.

And I just want to point out from Ventura county started on significant recharge many decades ago. So we have a lot of experience down in Ventura County.

And so some of the things I'd like to point out is that, number one, we've had situations where people have spent considerable money and recharged thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of acres of water and it disappeared because the groundwater basin was connected to another groundwater basin.

And as they filled this groundwater basin, it flowed to another basin and eventually escape the system altogether.

That's one of the things that you have to evaluate when you're trying to say, hey, the second thing is we've had situation where downstream water rights holders end up suing because somebody's taking water for recharge and decreasing their ability and their resources. So that was another complication that happened. And trying to.

And then we've had huge fights over is this an excess flow that should be recharged or is this an amount that should should go down downstream to to other water rights holders.

And so I say all that to say I'm not here with any of the right answers except to say it's a complicated issue and we all get frustrated after a drought we say we need to recharge, you know, and I am one fever and recharge but it's just not a simple solution.

And this, this one agency has egg all over their face because they spent a lot of money and they have no water. The two final points I would make is that trying to keep track of who gets the water that's recharged is also a challenge.

We have a basin that has more credits for the water then there is water in the basin. All right, so they literally have this comical situation of more credits than it is.

Like more people have checking accounts than there is cash and not even just cash in the bank, but the ability of the bank to pay it off. Just a hugely complicated issue. All that to be said, my final point is it really emphasizes that recharge is a smart thing for us to do.

But the only reliable thing we can do is to have people sustainably pump. We need to have the groundwater agencies get pumping to be at a sustainable level so that you're not reliant on this complicated hoped for recharge to somehow solve the problem. And so there's no substitute for good work by GSAs and hard decisions.

They are hard decisions to make to get sustainable pumping levels and to enforce sustainable pumping levels and have people finally start to adjust and say we're going to grow the crops, we're going to supply to the urban people, everybody that's counting on this water, we're going to do it at a sustainable level.

We're going to figure out what is the sustainable level and make the proper decisions for that. So thank you for letting me go on about that. But I was intrigued by this, knowing this hearing was coming up with and thinking about all the, all the experiences that we had and stuff.

So you haven't, you don't have an easy task in front of you there. Thank you very much.

Thank you for that Assembly Member and appreciate and agree it is a really complex system. I would just note when it comes to water rights Administration generally it is something that California has lagged behind other western states say, but quickly trying to catch up.

And that includes with our new water rights data system which to your point helps us better be able to unpack what are complex rights and complex considerations whenever we do this work. So thank you.

Thank you Madam Chair. For me to ask one follow up question for the water availability assessment at the statewide level. I'd like to see if you can also follow up with whether SGMA funds through the proposition are available to help us to do that. As it would again help us with recharge.

I think that analysis will allow the Legislature to maximize recharge and believe it's an important consideration for us. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Sure. Well, I like the five year idea. I think we need all of the above. Certainly this is not in lieu of a sustainable groundwater plan, but nonetheless, like I started this hearing with something about making hay while the sun is shining or capturing water while it's raining. It certainly makes a lot of sense.

I just had a couple mechanical questions. Really. Well, first I note some of Bennett's comment is a good one on how we actually take water that's going to recharge certain basins. And I will note that Lawrence Berkeley Lab is doing some speaking of tapping into academia, is doing some charting as to where groundwater goes.

So I'd love to see some connection. But you know, you mentioned the 9020 rule and we talk about spending a lot of money on some probably very talented consultants.

And I guess my feeling is, and you say a lot of applicants come in and they'd like to do a little more than the 9020, but if the 9020 is out there and it seems to be a reasonable standard, have you considered that that might be.

If one can establish 9020, you would get that automatically or it would have a less of a review because that's something that you find very acceptable. Let's get the permits going.

Yes, that is very much the case.

So it's happening anyway, irrespective of a reg or something along those lines.

Our environmental analyses and work tee off of this idea of again being able to take 9020, the peak peaks off with not harming folks. So there is a streamlined pathway if people are under the 9020 rule. But if they're looking for flows that are outside of that, that's when things get a little more complex. I see.

Okay, good. So you do, you do allow that to help you in the process? Yeah. Excellent, excellent. And I concur. I like the idea of having a two year phase. And if it does take infrastructure, you shouldn't eat up the time on your permit. And one man's public comment is another man's public objection.

But nonetheless, I appreciate perhaps the nuance there. And if that's something that you think would assist in the process, I certainly think we could consider that in here at the Legislature. So thank you for some, for your testimony, but also some very specific objections and objections suggestions that we might be able to implement here.

That's no doubt, no doubt that'll happen in the legislative process, certainly. But. Okay, thank you so much, Chair. And with that, we'll move on to our second panel.

So if those panelists could come forward, we have Justin Hopkins, General Manager of Stockton East, Michael Wakeman, who is General Manager of Omochumnee Hartnell Water District, and Laura Foglia, who is a PhD and VP with Larry Walker Associates. Welcome one and all. I think we will start with Mr. Hopkins. I'm not sure.

This is Mr. Hopkins on my left. Okay, great. Welcome and good morning.

Good morning, Madam Chair. All right, can everybody hear me this on. Okay, Good morning, Assemblymember Arambula and fellow Committee Members. I'm honored to to be here today. My name is Justin Hopkins.

I'm the General Manager of Stockton East Water District and I am very eager to talk with you about our use of the permitting that was authorized under AB658.

So getting into a little bit of background on Stockton east to give you some context, we were formed in 1948 to sustain our groundwater resources by providing supplemental surface water supplies. Our district is located in central and eastern San Joaquin county and we cover a little more than 143,000 acres.

Within that we have about 63,000 acres of irrigated agriculture and the entire city of Stockton. We manage up to 155,000 acre feet of surface water supply annually and 130,000 acre feet of groundwater pumping by our agricultural and municipal customers. We operate a 65 million gallon per day drinking water treatment plant.

That water is wholesale to City of Stockton, California Water Service Company in San Joaquin County. We then retail it to the 325,000 citizens of Stockton and we were actually a leader in groundwater recharge. We constructed our first recharge project in 2003 and since then we have recharged more than 112,000 acre feet.

We were not early adopters of the temporary diversion permits, but we were early and eager participants in the collaboration the Governor directed in 2022 between Department of Water Resources and the State Water Resource Control Board. We began working almost immediately.

I believe we were the second participant to work with DWR and their consultant MBK engineers to evaluate temporary permits for the Calaveras river and Rock Creek. Both watersheds are within or adjacent to our district boundary.

And shown on the screen here is the Rock Creek diversion chart that was developed by MBK prior to application of our first permit. Now, it's important to note both of these waterways, Calaveras river and Rock Creek, have Army Corps of Engineer flood control projects on them.

Now that is important because if the flood control projects are doing their job, you do not have highly variable flows in the waterway. You have, you have controlled release of stored floodwater. As such, the Calaveras river did not have much opportunity to divert water because Calavers river has new Hogan Reservoir. It's a very large storage facility.

Not only does it impound floodwater but does allow for year round carryover storage. So it will absorb a lot of that flood water. And the Calaveras river wasn't really a feasible option for us. As you can see from the chart here, Rock Creek looked very promising.

This is largely because the flood control dam on Rock Creek, which is Farmington Dam, cannot store water for more than 30 days. So the Army Corps is very eager to release that water once it's impounded. And it allows for some flashier flows like you would see naturally with stormwater runoff.

On a quick side note, in case there's any interest, Stockton East Water District is working on repurposing Farmington Dam to create a new 112,000 acre foot surface water storage facility. But that's a separate topic for different day. So this is our actual data for Rock Creek.

Rock Creek diversions over four years and four permits we diverted a total of 161 acre feet to storage. This is substantially less than the face value of our permits which is shown in orange. The diversions are shown in blue. But you can't really see them because they're. Excuse me, because they're so minuscule compared to the permit amount.

But the numbers are there on the screen. Our first 180 day permit was issued in the winter of 2022. 2023. This was quite a learning curve for Stockton East. First it took a long time to get this permit. We started work in August or September of 22 and our permit was issued on March 21 of 23.

Thankfully it was a very wet year and so we were actually able to divert the most water we've diverted under any permit at the 119 acre feed. It was also very costly. Not just the permit fee, but the consultant fees. Thankfully it was part of the DWR Water Board collaboration.

So Stockton east wasn't having to pay for the consultant to perform all the research necessary to collect 30 years of daily flow data. That's what was required for the Water Board to participate with a 9020 methodology for diversion. Our second and third 180 day permits were much more streamlined.

Not only did we have the process down and we need to start earlier but that large 30 year data request had already been submitted and so we were only submitting another year's worth of data to keep it up to date. And we'd received our first five year permit last October.

This so far seems to be much more cost effective. They have a greater permit fee. However, if you spread that permit fee over five years, it provides a greater value. However, unfortunately, we have not been able to use that permit yet.

So there were several successes with this permit process. And so what, what did go? Well foremost was the DWR water board collaboration. If that hadn't been directed by the Governor because DWR specific, the specific part of that is that DWR was covering all the costs, we probably would not have pursued a temporary permit.

One of our permit conditions that was quite easy to meet is that the water you store has to be pumped out in the same water year only storing 119 acre feet. It was easy to pump that back out since our GSA is pumping about 130,000 acre feet annually. And then lastly is the CEQA exemption by the Governor.

We, we didn't think that was going to be necessary because we were using existing diversion facilities and existing recharge facilities. But in some disagreements with the state staff, we ended up falling back on the governor's exemption because we didn't want to have to go through CEQA a second time for those facilities.

And this not necessarily ceqa, but these state staff did become an issue with our five year permit. And so with that I'll move into our challenges. First and foremost is the cost. The costs are better with the five year permit, but the unit cost of water still remain very high.

Our first 180 day permit had engineering fees of about $50,000 that decreased substantially with the subsequent permits. Since we were just updating information because of the flood control projects.

There's a lot of times when the dams are making flood control releases, but we are not able to divert any of that water because we have not hit the thresholds identified in the 9020 methodology, which if not sure if anyone's familiar with that, but what that requires is looking at 30 years of average daily flow for that specific day.

And if we're at the 90th percentile of that flow, then we're allowed to divert. So really has to be at the top, top end of historical flows. If we were allowed to divert, the flood control projects would be able to release more water correspondingly and provide more immediate evacuation of the floodwater that's stored behind the facilities.

And then lastly is the permit conditions. So with our five year permit it was CEQA exempt, but CDFW did kind of take a second bite at the apple for environmental conditioning. And they added that a burrowing owl survey must be conducted every time prior to a recharge activity.

And these were existing facilities, they went through CEQA when they were built. And it is very difficult to have a biologist available that morning to come out and do a burrowing owl Survey because we, it is day by day that we know if we're able to divert water storage.

Because of that, it is unlikely that we will ever use our five year permit. Yes. And not wanting to complain without providing some suggested improvements, definitely recommend continuing with the CEQA exemption. And we relied on that. It would be nice.

I don't know exactly how this would work, but to make it a true exemption so that the regulatory agencies can't use permit conditioning as a workaround, we're almost worse off that it's a condition of the permit. Whereas if it was through ceqa, we could have done some sort of mitigation.

Well, technically we already mitigated it when we built projects, but if it was a separate CEQA process, we could have done some mitigation to make it a much less burdensome impact. Cost remains an issue. The permit fees can be steep, especially because the diversion amount is a true gamble.

We have no idea how much water is going to be available to divert that year. 1. One option to consider is if it's possible to tie permit fees to actual diverted volume rather than face value of the permit, that that could bring the cost down substantially. And then the consultant costs are high related to data collection.

Once you get over that first year, it's a little better. But if there was a maybe state subsidy like we were able to benefit from for getting that first year of data together, that would be of great benefit. And I think it was brought up with the chair of the Water Board.

Streamlining the water availability analysis with some different or better methodology would be very helpful. Again because the 9020 method, there's flood water that's flowing past us but we're not able to divert it because we haven't reached those peak, those peak flood flows. With the updates, the water rights system, you know, seems easy from our perspective.

Maybe it's a different perspective from the Water Board, but since the Water Board's managing all the water rights, if they could just tell us at what flow that day, all existing water rights will be satisfied and we can divert beyond that.

That would be easier than trying to get 30 years worth of data together so they can look at the average flows for the day. And that's all I have. Thank you for your time. I'd be happy to take any questions.

Okay. Mr. Wakeman?

Yeah. Good morning, Madam Chair. Mike Wakeman, General Manager, Omochumne Hartnell Water District. And Madam Chair, you did a great job of pronouncing our name and our district because most people can't do that. We are a district that was formed back in 1953.

The original purpose of our district was actually to take water from the Consum or the Folsom South Canal for surface water and then provide that to our growers down in the area. The district did not sign up to get, you know, a permanent contract.

So what they did is they were just taking interim water and then they eventually took Sly park water from the Bureau project. So it's, you know, it has evolved as we move forward.

What we then started looking at as a district, I wasn't involved in it back then, but what we started looking at was actually putting in some flashboard dams in the Cosumis River.

And I think we're one of the few rivers, of course it's an undammed river, you might know, that has these type of flashboard dams that we actually use to hold back the water. And the purpose of these dams was for allowing riparian water users to use that water off the river when they're flood irrigating.

And the other purpose was groundwater recharge. And one of the interesting things, I was going back through some of the old minutes of the board and they actually mentioned groundwater recharge as one of their major things that they are looking at for these flashboard dams on the river.

And the reason why is because within the Cosumus river, there are some pockets there that actually recharge greatly. Back in 2006, we actually did a diversion off the Folsom South Canal in conjunction. We called it a pre wetting. This river disconnects during. During the summertime.

And so we actually did a pre wedding where we pulled water off the Folsom South Canal, ran it down to about 99. And let me explain our district. We're on the Cosumes river from. In the Sacramento county from Jackson highway down to about Highway 99. And in between we're about 30,000 acres.

And what we did is we ran it down about three or four miles down Highway 99, but it never reached Highway 99. No matter how much water it seemed like we put in the river at that time of the year, it was in August.

Cause there are spots that the river would run and actually stop and you'd see it actually disappear. So groundwater recharge has always been a big thing for our district going back to the days.

The problem is, is as we move forward in time, you know, from the 60s and 70s and agriculture got a lot more efficient with the ground, with irrigation, so we moved really hard in agriculture to become drip irrigation. Micro spraying clears and these type of things.

And in reality we're finding out that that might have cost us in many ways because we're not bringing that extra surface water into the area where we're doing groundwater recharge agriculture and their flood irrigation also too.

Within that process within our district, what happened is that as we began moving away from flood irrigation and moving to the drip systems, we started installing, we had to have clean water to move through the drip systems. Water coming down the Cosumnes river was also very variable because we're not a managed dam.

I mean, you know, flows we have them or with flows we don't, they don't go all year long. So farmers needed reliability so they moved into using the groundwater and they were which is much cleaner and less costly in order to clean up for those drip systems. So you saw the farmers really moving off of the river.

We have very few growers currently that actually use the river right now on surface water. So we'd like to encourage a little bit more, but you know, that is a cost thing for them in order to be survive in ag industry.

So as we move forward, keep going forward in time 2012, the district actually secured a Prop 84 grant to do a groundwater recharge. And it was originally similar to what they did in Stockton east where we put the ponds out. We actually flooded those areas. We were working with a local agency.

We're going to actually transfer their water rights to a diversion point down downstream because they were upstream and use their water rights to actually flood that area. But it turns out they didn't want to, you know, get the messy falling, doing, changing their point of use for their water rights.

They had change in management and they sort of backed out of the project. So literally our project sat for about three or four years before we really decided what are we going to do with this money we got from Prop 84? How are we going to sort of revamp the project?

And then we hired Laura Foglia and their firm at Larry Walker to come in and what we decided to do is actually use a system where we go out, we flood vines, we flood those areas is about a thousand acres of vines for our project. At that same time the temporary use permits came along.

We looked at the 180 day permit to be able to use through the process. And what I think one of the things we found out going through the process is you had to have everybody lock step and barrel with you.

And I had the fortunate ability or not ability, but the fortunate to work with a Lot of people in the industry and some of the people like Melinda Frost Herzl, who actually did a great job of sort of corralling some of the agencies and the people within the agencies, she helped us really corral the environmental group.

So we had the whole Consummates coalition up and down the, up and down the river working together for the same thing. We got US Fish and Wildlife actually do our stream flow analysis for us. And you know, we are one of the first permits for the five years in the process.

And I think the reason we were able to move forward with that is because the support we had among everybody that stream flow analysis U.S. fish and Wildlife Service did, I mean, came from U.S. fish and Wildlife Service. So people are saying, hey, that's good, they did their job, they know what they're doing.

California Department, excuse me, Department of Fish and Wildlife Service. I still use Fish and Game shows my age looked at the analysis and agreed with it. So as we move forward in the process of obtaining these permits, we had the backing before we even went to the state water board for the permit process.

So they looked at it and said okay, this is good. But they still had their process to go through.

And literally by the time we went for our first 180 day permit, we got it mid January and our flow time is December through February 15th on one pump and March 15th on the other due to fish screen issues we have to have. So we got the pump a little bit, but not much at first.

That first year, second year we went through the second process, couldn't get the permit and all right in time we missed a window and I don't think we permitted pumped anything. That second year, five year permit came along and that was a big thing. I mean thank you very much for sponsoring that Bill.

It really made life a lot easier for our district. We went through and we applied for the five year permit. Having all the history and stuff from the previous permits made the process a lot smoother. We were the first year, five year permit person good and bad. I mean it's good being first.

It's bad being first because nobody's been through the process. And so you have to go through those hoops to make sure the process is being good. About the first five year we might have been able to slide with little things. You know, we have pretty much avoided the 9020 rule being first through the permit.

And we did have a good stream stream analysis which helped us through that process. So I think it's, it was a great start to Move forward. But again, cost is a big thing. We are a small district. I am a part time consultant for the district. Our budget is prior to Sigma was only about 150, $120,000.

Our revenues after SGMA, of course, that doubles to be able to implement Sigma. And all our growers love us for all the fees we're putting on them now, but we have a little bit more of a budget.

But still, I mean if you're spending 50, $60,000 on, no offense to Laura, consultant fees and those type of things in order to apply for these permits, these small districts can't do that. It is huge. Even the fees for the waterboard.

And I like the suggestion Dustin just made about, you know, maybe it's what we can actually pump out for that year is what our fee is and that we don't have that big upfront fee. I mean, I mean that was a, that was a good thing.

And a lot of things that Chairman Esquivel was talking about, some of those reforms are really, really good. I mean I started writing down and really veered off from my written testimony I have here. But I think those are good things that we need to look at as we move forward in the process.

A couple of the things that I think that we really, that CEQA of course is the big one. I'm going to go all the way back to my ceqa. Fees are crazy. I'm sorry, it's just out of control.

If we're looking to expand our project and if it wasn't for the relationship that I developed with DWR and Jenny Marr at Floodmar, Ginnie Mar Floodmar, we wouldn't be able to afford to do what we're doing. They've really supported us.

We did an ECOFIT evaluation of the Cosumes river which allowed us to find areas where there are floodplain inundations we could do which have great recharge areas which is also beneficial to flood control. There are things within our CEQA that we have to do an addendum because we want to expand our project.

And as Assemblyman Gallagher was saying, well, you've only pumped out this much.

Well, if we were to rely only on those years where we have certain flood flows and didn't get the five year permit, we wouldn't be able to pump hardly at all because we don't have the facilities to, to take a huge amount of water off at a time.

I mean some of our, I mean we're only pumping maybe 3040 cfs coming off, off the river Max. But so in for us to meet our permit, which I believe is at 4,000 acre feet we've been pumping, you Know4300400500 a year.

We have a facility restriction on ours, so we got to be able to expand.

So DWR saw the opportunity to see one of our five year permits, saw the opportunity for a district to sort of, the board hasn't fired me yet for coming up with some crazy ideas to come, you know, and do these type of projects and has given me a lot of leeway to move forward with some new ideas that are sort of, I wouldn't say cutting edge.

I mean it's been around forever. Everybody knew about groundwater, but. But how do we actually implement what we're looking to do? So cost, and we've talked about it, no matter what the cost is, where it is, it's gotta be kept in control and it's gotta be simple. It can't get too complicated.

A lot of your small districts like the ones I work for, they don't have resources. I'm one of the few districts in my area in the Cosumnes Basin and a lot of, except for the Metropolis Sacramento area, small AG districts, they don't have staff to do this stuff. So it's got to be simple.

But yet they have some areas where it would work really good for. They got some streams, creeks and things. If we're able to pull off with keeping something, something simple.

I don't have specific recommendations on keeping it simple other than we got to cut down some of the regulations and stuff that in order for this process to work, talked about CEQA reform. One of the things that, you know, understanding that, you know, we got to keep track of the water in accounting water.

One of the things that we did notice on our last five year permit was a requirement that we had to have sign owner landowners saying that they're taking out that first amount of water that put in.

I realize that as a way of accounting, but on a district like ours where we're using about 20,000 acre feet a year in order to, you know, within the district to irrigate, if our district can show that we are going to use that water within our district, I don't see the need for a landowner to sign a piece of paper saying their first water they're extracting from the ground is actually that water that we put in the ground.

Landowners, especially in our district are very cautious of government and they don't, if you sign something like that, they think you're messing with their groundwater rights. Okay. So that is one of the main concerns that we had with our permit as we went forward.

I know Laura is going to talk about the 20, the 9020 rule and some of the other really specifics on our permit. But I just like to emphasize definitely five year permit. If we can make it 10 year permit, that's great.

I know we'd get a lot of pushback, maybe from the state board, but because of the Cosumnes river the way you are, one of the years we had so much water in 23, we couldn't pump because we were flooded. I had six feet of water on our vineyards. Yeah.

And so, you know, I couldn't use the permit, didn't need to use a permit during that year. So, I mean, there's some, a lot of variabilities in the different areas. And it was mentioned earlier, different areas have different issues and that variability needs to be addressed.

But again, I go back, keep it simple, cost effective, and I think you'd get a lot of buy in on this and really help our water situation in California. Thank you.

It's all yours, Ms. Foglia. Thank you, Madam Chair. And yeah, I'll take you through actually three examples free of the five year permit that you have in your list. And.

There.

No, it's not, it's stuck. Can you go there?

It goes twice.

Okay. Okay. So the three permits that five year temporary permit I work with are Scott Valley Irrigation District. So we are up in Siskiyou County. Scott river is a tributary to the Klamath River. So a lot of different issues and perspective up there.

And this is the longest one we started working on this permit actually UC Davis started back in 2016 and that permit has 5,400 acre feet of water permitted. Then we will go to the amount of water that actually is diverted then. Recently we worked a lot with Sierra Valley Groundwater Management District.

It's a new, it's a new gsa. They are developing their groundwater management plan and we recently obtained a five year permit just last year. And the permit is for 347 acre acre feet of water. I want to put things in perspective. We are talking about small basins.

So in Sierra Valley for just, just to give you a sense, they pump less than 10,000 acre feet of water per year. If through efficiency and some recharge they could save a couple of thousand, they would be fine, they would, they would be sustainable. They would really solve their issues.

Obviously these are numbers that are very different from Stockton. So it's always like a question of each business its own type of needs. And then Mike just spoke a lot about zero WD and for this one specifically I want to take you through the 9020 versus a standard permit.

So why the OHWD board accepted and moved forward with a standard permit and not the 9020 in the small district? Actually one thing, they tend to use existing infrastructure. There are no fundings for building up a lot and there is no staff. So this district like zero is lucky they have, they have Mike working for them.

The other district, basically they don't have anybody. So that is something that needs to be taken into account. And the reason why they move forward with this permit is because, because of the SIGMA grants from dwr. So Sigma pretty much combined with other type of grants.

I have to say in Scott Valley a lot of the funding came at the very begin, beginning from Nifwif National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. They funded a lot of the beginning of the project. So in terms of zero, and this is just a picture. So these are the way the Vineyards are flooded in the Kazamdas River.

And I think that the big difference for ohwd, it's really the fact that we were successful in getting a standard permit instead of the 1920 permit. Also a lot of stakeholder interest and Engagement that made a huge difference. That didn't happen in the other places.

We also combined a lot of work through academia, so a lot of UC Davis and Lawrence Berkeley lab work. So we have really an impressive amount of data that has been collected for this basin to really show the benefit. So that's the goal at the end. The challenge, as Mike said, is mostly infrastructure.

I think there would be enough water quite a few times over the year to pump more, but the infrastructure are not there yet.

And if we look at the numbers in terms of the streamlined permits, so the 1920 rule versus the standard permit, if we look at the number of days when you would be able to do recharge, the two plots are on the same scale. The one on the top is on the streamline, the permit.

So we barely get to 40 days per year. If we move down in the bottom plot is on the standard permitting. And that take us up to almost 100 days per year in some years.

So the reason with the 9020, we found out that only five years out of the last 35 would have provided greater than 20 days of diversion availability. And none of the years have a number of days that are enough to justify the amount of water that is permitted.

So with a standard permit, we calculated at least 20 days of discharge in 27 of the last 35 years. And so it really changed completely the perspective. And I remember presenting it to the board and the board saying, no, we take the risk and we try with a standard permit.

Because the 9020 may not even just give us justification for spending the money, even if again at the time the money was from grants. When we move into Scott Valley, I have a quick. It was an interesting process. So in the first pilot project was 2016 was basically really started from colleagues at UC Davis.

We managed to recharge something like 675 acre feet. And again the total permit amount is 5,400. Then 2022, we got the permit too late. And here I have to say, in this basin up north, the state water board unfortunately has to put up with a lot of objections.

So we had to spend months and months working on objection. Then we changed the strategy and instead of submitting the permit, we were first talking to all the objectors many times. And then just to reduce the amount of letters received by the state of the board. So 2022 was basically 28 acre feet of water. So almost nothing.

2023 was still kind of tricky because we got the permit too late. And that year all the water happened between the end of December and early January, we got the permit in January 18 was too late and it was not possible to really recharge. Then we have the magic 2024.

When we started earlier, we learned a lesson. We talked to all the protesters and the permit was issued in November. And we managed to recharge more than 2,500. So 2,500 in a basin like Scott Valley, It's a lot of water and we have a really big network of groundwater levels.

We could see areas that went up groundwater levels increase by almost 20ft in 34 weeks. So the soil can take. It is just a question of being able to do it. 2025, it has been a weird year because there was so much water everywhere. So there was a lot. There were a lot of flooding issues.

Flat houses that were already flooded. So we could not do much more than what was already there. What we have seen anyway with the 2425 and this year is kind of a difficult one, but we can see groundwater level being higher and consistently higher every year by quite a bit. And in 2026 we obtain the.

The temporary permit for five years. So we started. Unfortunately, we could not use it right away because we were dealing with stream bed alteration, agreement with fish and wildlife. And that's maybe solved right now. But that was a big problem because this district.

So the way recharge happens in Scott Valley is just the diversion that they use for irrigation in the summer is used in the winter for recharge. So no infrastructure at all. It's just the same ditch that is used. It needs an aligned ditch so leaks a lot of water.

And then if we go into Sierra Valley, this is a small basin, as I said, is up just north of Lake Tahoe. And there it's a very dry. The eastern side is very dry. The western side is very important because it's a big wetland, one of the biggest wetlands that needs to be protected. It's generally pretty.

You don't see much runoff usually, but when it rains, you could see a lot of runoffs that doesn't come necessarily through creeks. It just comes naturally through the landscape.

So the idea was, can we capture some of those that runoff, excess runoff during the winter and then help these basin be sustainable again because it might not be a huge effort. And so we found a couple of location in the southern eastern part of the valley where somebody had a year around water. Right.

So we used the DWR grant and the opportunity for this recharge to basically revamp some of the older diversion that were not used for a long time. You know, again we are talking about places where fundings are not really coming through easily.

And so we did some temporary structure like the ones that you see in the picture to really just hold all the water up a little bit. And it has been, it has been in Sierra Valley. It's been a great process in terms of all the collaboration with the other agencies.

Also CDFW was very cooperative and they kind of provided good guidances. One of the thing is still that Sierra Valley is the first permit and the only one that is upstream of Auroville. That is our big sticky point because it's a 1920. So obviously as you have seen in the previous example, unfortunately 1920 is very random.

You never know if you get enough water. But basically in Sierra the recharge can happen only when Auroville is spilling. It's something that we are starting talking about with people responsible for Auroville and we were wondering maybe there will be new permits coming from upstream Auroville from other basin. Maybe not.

We understand that it's difficult to say, yeah, let's, let's approve the permit and maybe then there is a. There is a potential impact to downstream water users, but maybe having some type of rules.

So we were thinking like let's say that altogether potential permits upstream of Auroville if It's less than 0.1% of the inflow, maybe that would be possible even if Auroville is not spilling or coming up. We are brainstorming kind of ideas because we understand it's complicated, but it's a big requirement. Basically.

Oroville spilling can be a very significant limiting factors for these permits. And again, these are all the structures that are in place up in Sierra Valley. They are mostly temporary structures that are only meant to hold on water for a little longer.

And then we manage also to install through a fish and wildlife grant a temporary dry well to see if we can go through the impermeable layers and just do recharge directly. And this is pretty much, I think the take home message is in, in some basic. We need to really do more if we can.

I think a lot of, a lot of infrastructure are in place but in infrastructure and, and funding is still one of the big issues for, for this district. I have to say the benefit of having this temporary permit is that we brought people around the table and so the stakeholders now are responsive.

And my lesson with for example Scott Valley was you start and stakeholders. I'm not sure I really want this extra water. And then at some point everybody calls, can you divert some in my land? Because then they see the benefit. They see that everybody is really coming together. So I believe that all these.

I would say we are still in a pilot phase for these permits. But it was good because it made us. It gave us the opportunity to try and see what works and what doesn't work. Thank you.

Assemblymember Arambula.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to have questions for each of the presenters. I'll begin with Mr. Hopkins, if I can. I wanted to drill down on the difference between the 180 day and the five year permit process. You had stated that it was a long process and costly for the 180 days.

And I just wanted to reaffirm that. You felt it was more cost effective to use the five year permitting process as just as your organization found out. Is that correct?

Yes, that is correct.

That's very helpful for the other organizations that have not applied or are currently using the 180 day process to evaluate their own cost effectiveness as they're going forward. You spoke about a state subsidy. Can you speak to how much you received and what percentage of the total cost that was?

So we never received the funding directly from the state. DWR received funding from somewhere in the budget and they paid for all the cost. So they paid the water board their fees. They paid the consulting engineer their fees. We just got to have the benefit of permit. At the end of the day,

that process of having fees paid is one I'm hoping that we can work on as the Legislature to create more avenues for organizations to receive that as you then have the opportunity, specifically with your size, to recharge large amounts. I do want to follow up.

You said your recharge was ultimately minuscule and it was in part because of that daily need of a biologist to look at the burrowing owl. Can you speak to why that would be implemented or why it would be necessary? Is it greatly affects your ability to recharge and just wanted to get your thoughts on that.

Yes. So the burrowing owl condition is a condition on our five year permit. So this is the first year we've had the five year permit and I don't know that that is the only reason we haven't diverted any water. The big hurdle for us throughout all the permits over the four years is the 9020 methodology.

Just hitting that 90th percentile daily flow rate downstream of a flood control facility is very difficult.

We heard of the standard permit being available based on the water availability assessment. Is that not applicable for Your permit. And why are you utilizing the 9020 instead of how much the flood flows are?

Largely for timing. It takes a lot longer to go through the water availability analysis. The 9020 methodology was, you know, proposed by the water board. Therefore it was immediately acceptable. And since we wanted to get a permit for that divergent season, that was the best option. We have some other permits, regular water. Right.

Applications, I should say, not permits that we've been working to perfect over decades. And we have, we're probably seven figures into water availability analysis. So very, very different paths.

If there was a statewide water availability assessment, would that again decrease costs for you and increase your ability to do more recharge rather than the 9020?

Potentially depending on who agrees to the water availability assessment. Yeah.

Interesting. I'll move on to Mr. Wakeman if I can. I first wanted to grab onto your point that with sustainability and moving towards drip irrigation, that has greatly affected our ability to groundwater recharge overall. Historically there was a great advantage to using that flood irrigation. And while we've improved the sustainability, it then has affected our basins.

I think that's an important lesson for us to learn.

Yeah, and you know, it's. Do I have analysis to prove that? No.

But you look over the years of being a fifth generation farmer in the, you know, in the area, and you look at the up and down the valley and it's common sense, we're bringing in a lot of surface water into the valley with CVPIA and all, you know, surface water restrictions and everything else, you cut that surface water out and then what happened, especially down in the South Valley, you see a lot of guys moving to groundwater.

Okay. You don't have that recharge, you get water quality issues, you get, you know, water supply issues, not having that surface water into the area. So I think it's a combination water efficiency. Yeah, we need to be more efficient.

But then we got to figure out, okay, so when we do have these excess waters, when we do have these waters, is there a way to bring that into those areas where we can do some really good recharge? Problem is that within agriculture, as we moved away from flood irrigation, all of those systems disappeared.

As you saw in the picture that showed ours. We went in, in our district, we put in about, with our Prop 84 grant, about a million dollars worth of piping within our back into the system. And there's some pretty good pipes. We have 24 inch pipes running through there so we could pump a lot of water.

And I, we oversized it knowing that our current system does not have the ability to put that much water into it. But I figured, you know, eventually we're going to add to the system. But what we did too is we just have simple plastic rollout pipe. It's just a farmer solution.

We're just flood irrigating again is basically what we did. And we're able to do it on the vines are unique grapevines because they go dormant. And we have one of our growers has a large amount of grapevines within this area that we can do this.

And so we just roll it out and we'll be able to flood all clear up probably until about 15th of March. We could probably go to the probably the 1st of April without having any effects on the vines at all.

But the other benefit of that is for grapevines, we're taking that six feet of soil profile and basically pre watering it before they start needing that to grow. So we're eliminating maybe one or two irrigations in the process in the spring by doing this groundwater recharge. So there are some other advantages.

I mean our soil more of a sandy loam soil, a little bit more unique. Maybe some of the sandier soils where it'll just flow through, you don't get that benefit. But in our area you're going to get that. So it is a conundrum that we put ourselves into.

So, you know, when we look about, you know, what can we do, how do we address things and putting back flood irrigation isn't as evil as we all thought it was in the past.

That's interesting regarding the permeability of the soil, how it may ultimately allow for some of the irrigation that's necessary for the following years. Having practiced medicine in Selma, Quezon, LA capital de La Pasanto Del Mundo, which is the raising capital of the world, we had quite a number of grapevines and understood that importance.

To make sure we were doing those flood irrigations. I wanted to come back to your comment regarding fees. Fees based on what was permitted versus what you were able to deposit and or recharge.

Madam Chair, it may be something for us to consider regarding can they deposit the money based on the totality of what they can recharge and then either get refunded or have credits for following years so that ultimately they're not paying for potential recharge that they're not using?

Yeah, and I think it's the upfront fees. You know, it's that upfront fee and which being involved in multiple programs, area program and this program, we Keep seeing fees increased throughout the years on a lot of these different things.

And I'm not sure what the upfront fee, I mean, Laura has more information about it because, you know, we're the fourth year or five years so we haven't done it in a while. But I know those fees are getting increased and that would be concern. I like the ideas.

If you're going to put that up front, maybe then that gets credited to what you actually, those fees you pay, which you actually use type of thing. So yeah, definitely for a small district like ours, you know, 10, 15, 20 thousand dollar fees up front is a big nut to get your board Members to really go through.

And you're, you know, Lord, us farmers, we're tight. We complain about everything, you know, but we complain about fees the most because that's something that, you know, we're not investing in. It seems like for the amount of money we're investing, we're only getting a small little bit out of it.

My board Members, why are we putting so much money in and you know, I got to continue convince them it's a long term process that you need to look at long term for sustainability within your district.

Can you speak to what you spoke about regarding the landowner signing? Why is that necessary and why is it the first that needs to come out?

Yeah, I think it's an accounting process for the state board. So they want to be able to, when you're putting that water in and you heard it from your colleague here, you want to be able to account for that water coming back out and being used.

So basically what we're looking at, that groundwater recharge that we're doing has to be the first used during the year.

So we know that we use that water per state requirements, that you're using that groundwater within the year that you recharge it or within that water year you recharge it because there's not a beneficial use for groundwater recharge in itself. So you have to use that for some beneficial use. So that is one of the requirements.

Our previous, our first permits we weren't required to have landowner sign. We actually did an analysis where we're saying we're using within our district we're going to use 20,000 acre feet of water. We're going to our Max amount we're going to apply is 4,000 acre feet.

So we're basically saying those within our district, that first 4,000 acre feet, they're pumping as we're going to consider our groundwater use. When we went for the 5 years, when it was almost a last minute thing, if I remember right. And I'm not, you know, you could have a state board actually maybe comment on it.

I'm not exactly sure why they put it in there, but I think it was more of an accounting process to be able to count in and out.

I can understand if you're putting a lot more in than what you're using within your district, then you're almost getting into a water banking situation for further down the road or something where you really need to account for that water, where it's going and what's happening with it and losses and those type of things like that.

But we're talking such a small time period that we've got to use that water. I don't really see the necessary thing. And it was, I had to pull teeth on.

We had to rearrange and make sure we put stuff in there about water rights and everything else for one of our larger landowners to sign on the dotted line to say, yeah, I agree to that, to make sure that they weren't giving up any groundwater rights. And perceived or not, I mean, perception is about.

Becomes reality to me and the growers out there because they're not involved in depth like we are dealing with this every day.

Yeah, I understand much of that healthy distrust of government that many of these landowners may have.

That I question, Madam Chair, why we can't have the agencies insist, since it's simply an accounting issue, that the water that goes in ultimately comes out in that same year, rather than having to have each individual landowner sign on, because it's unlikely that many are going to have that trust, even with all of the clarifications that you've provided.

Last question for you. You spoke about flashboard dams. What is that exactly and how does that work? That's not something.

It's old school. Basically, within the Cosumnes river, they went in and they put in cement, cement foundation and cement sites. And we actually go in the river during the springtime after there is a disconnection at the river down below. And we actually put in boards, Wood boards that hold the water back.

And in certain areas we have pretty good recharge. Like I said originally was for riparian users to be able to use the water for a longer period of time. Since we are not a managed river, we're an undimmed, you know, all the way up and have a very much variability in flows during the years.

So we put them in the spring, we have to have them out by September 15th and it is an old, old permit before there was a state Water Resources Control Board. So yeah, it was when it was issued by believe it was reclamation board actually issued the permit back in the day.

Thank you, Sir. Now for Ms. Foglia, if I can. You spoke about the infrastructure need. Is that mostly for conveyance for building the moving of water from where it is to where you want to do the recharge?

Yeah, it is that or in, in the case of Kazamnas is also to enhance the pumps because some of these pumps were pre existing and the river is way more in size by now.

So now the pump, they don't go down enough into the riverbed and so they are not capable of pumping what they were supposed to pump. So that's one part for the other basins at the end. If you manage to look into existing infrastructure, you.

You may not need so much, but you always need some kind of improvements because in some of the small district, if that version is not really used, maybe it's not very well maintained. So if you want to use it for recharge, you have to be able to monitor how much recharge you really do.

You need to have all the data, so you need to revamp the infrastructure. So far, I have to say really all the DWR grants pretty much funded this type of work. The data collection and the reporting. Anyway, I think it's critical because you want to be able to show if there is a benefit.

That's the only way to get the next grant. Right. So you need to show. So we really invested a lot in all the free example that I presented. We invested a lot on data and hopefully that's going to be the way to also keep the stakeholders on board.

If they see the benefit, then they will approve it a little more. But I think it's a combination in terms of funding of infrastructure and the data that are needed to show that things are moving into the right direction.

That's great to hear that DWR is currently helping with those infrastructure needs.

Yeah, the grants are over now.

Well, that may be something we need to look at.

zero, didn't get a DWR grant, so we got different combination of grants a little bit. With UC Davis, Livermore Berkeley.

You spoke about the standard permits versus the 9020. Were you referencing the standard permits to be the five year permit, is that correct?

No, the standard permit is just not looking at the 90th percentile of the flow, but looking at a different number which is based on the actual flow needs or whatever.

As Mike said for cosomness we were able to work with US Fish and Wildlife, a lot of the local stakeholders and NGOs and we came up with a calculation month by month.

So we have a different threshold in December, January, February, March, which is way lower as you saw in my numbers, way lower than the 1920 in Scott Valley we also managed to get the standard permit so not the 90 percentile rule.

And that because there is a U.S. forest Service water rights and we managed after eight years of a lot of engagement, we managed to get CDFW to agree that that number was protective. So that was enough. So no need to go into the 90th percentile. And that's why in 2024 we recharged for almost three months.

Can you comment on the different recharge availability from the standard permit to the 5 year permit? What are the differences?

And no, it's the standard permit. I call it standard. I don't know exactly. I don't know if there is a definition is not regarding we basically in Scott Valley for example we have and also in zero it's a five year permit with let's say standard rules for flows.

So they are both five years permit is just the way you calculate the flow availability that makes a difference. So instead of going with the 9020 which is streamlined, it takes way less really than like way less work than the whatever standard rule. But it is the same in terms of permits. It's exactly the same.

It's just we don't have in zero and Scott Valley they don't have to obey and wait for the 90th percentile of the flow every day.

Madam Chair, that may be something that we look towards as we improve 658 whether we can align with the standard permit as that would increase the availability of recharge.

And just to reiterate, there is a cost effectiveness that occurs from looking at the five year permit that if we could align with the standard permit we would then increase number of opportunities to be able to do recharge which should increase the options for many of these agencies to look towards that five year permit and to get us above 1% usage right now.

So thank you Madam Chair for allowing me to sit on the dais and commenting on this Bill.

Well thank you Assembly Member Arambula for coming up with the idea in the first place. I don't know if we can improve upon it, but just a couple questions. I'm intrigued by the fees and the idea of perhaps changing the structure, but we'd have to look at what. What are the fees used for on the front end.

I can see the chair of the water board is nodding his head behind you, but I would like to take a look at that. We can somehow tie that to what you ultimately are able to get.

You know, then when you have to report back to your board, it becomes a much more realistic and tangible goal in a lot of ways. And then the second thing I had is, so has the DFW mandate of this daily review of the owl. I think he said you left me hanging.

Has it been that it shut down your ability to divert at any given day or any given time? I know you have to do. Do the analysis, but did it actually prevent you?

Yes. So I actually don't know the answer to that. That was a condition of the most recent permit we received in October, and we have not performed any burrowing owl surveys. But I also don't know that we've had any opportunities to divert because of the 9020 methodology.

It would be something worth looking at if it actually ultimately impedes your ability. You go through all this and then there's no ability to do it would be troubling, especially on a daily review. So I was intrigued by it.

Okay, I don't have any further questions, but we'll talk about the money up front because that's a big issue. zero, I forgot about that. Okay, thank you all so much for being here. We're actually going to go to public comment. So if there is public comment, please come forward and give us a quick rundown.

You know, we'll give you no more than a minute or so. Seeing no public comment, please. Gotta jump up quickly. Good morning. Good morning.

Good morning. My name is Betsy Elzefon, and I'm also with Larry Walker Associates, and I work with Laura Folia. And I just wanted to emphasize one of the things that she brought up about Sierra Valley, which is the groundwater sustainability plan that I work with. As she noted, it's a very small district.

We're the only groundwater project that's been permitted that's above Oroville and the Oroville. I just want to emphasize the Oroville condition is extraordinarily restrictive. If we. This year we were actually able to divert under the 90, we met the 9020 condition.

I think it was 70 days because we had such a good year and we only met Oroville, it was less than half of those days. Had we been able to divert with just the 9020 and these numbers aren't going to sound huge to you, but we would have been able to Divert?

zero, actually it was bigger than that. It was in the hundreds. We could have done about 200 acre feet or more of diversion. And under the, with Oroville, we were only able to divert about 20 acre feet. And all of those numbers sound small.

But also, as Laura said, to meet the sustainable yield, the district only needs to reduce pumping or all that by about, it's about 1500 to 2000ft. And so the amount that we were able to divert under the permit was 1 to 2%. But had the Oroville condition not been there, we wouldn't have been able to divert.

We would have been able to address 10 to 20% of that yield. And the big reason that we can't, that we need to meet this Oroville condition is to make sure that all of the allocations downstream of Oroville, all the water rights downstream of Oroville are met, which are huge.

But the amount that we're diverting on a daily basis, at the most it's two and a half cfs. And the inflow to Oroville on a low day is 3,000 to 5,000 cfs. So we're talking about a flow that's less than 0.1% of the inflow to Oroville. That is a huge issue.

And again, this is a very small GSA. Sierra Valley has a population of 1500 people. The Groundwater Management District has a staff of two part time people. And we would not have been able to do any of what we've done without the DWR grants.

But this would have a big effect on our ability to meet our sustainable yield if Oroville was not a condition. Thank you.

Good morning, Chair and Members of the Committee. I am Cam Besdek with Northern California Water Association, and we are the water districts, water companies, small towns, rural communities and landowners that beneficially use both surface and groundwater resources in the Sacramento Valley.

Sustainable groundwater management is woven into the very fabric of the Sacramento Valley and it is one of our highest priorities across the region. We are very grateful to the Legislature and specifically to this Committee for reviewing this important topic today.

We also look forward to working with the Legislature and the Administration on adjustments to the current system so that we can scale up our recharge efforts and utilize this opportunity to build towards long term groundwater sustainability. Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair. Soren Nelson with the Association of California Water Agencies. I just wanted to express my appreciation to you and the Committee for moving forward with this review. I think it's timely, it's topical, it's a consensus item for the water community that this is important and not working well.

So it's an appropriate focus for the Legislature. I wanted to focus on two sort of themes that I heard today that sort of extend out into other issues in water world. The first being infrastructure funding. I think you're probably all very tired of hearing the water community come asking for infrastructure funding.

But this is a really good example of what we're talking about when we Talk about that Prop 4 had just $75 million in it for conveyance funding.

And listening to the testimony today, there's sort of a chicken and egg problem of, you know, why go out and get a permit and do the work to get the ability to divert if you don't have the facilities to move the water to where you can recharge it?

And for a small district like the ones that we heard from, that's really important to have that state support. The other thing, and I'll preface this by saying that I'm married to a civil servant.

I'm the son of two civil servants, but sometimes the inertia of the state apparatus doesn't lend itself to the goals that the Legislature and that the Governor have said around recharge. I think we've maybe run into the limit of what the state water board can do without more help from the Legislature.

I think they've done what they can to extract time and value out of the process that exists. And so we've probably reached a point where it's appropriate for the Legislature to give them the help that they need. So really appreciate the attention and thank you.

Good morning. Kyle Jones representing the San Joaquin Valley Water Collaborative Action Program, which is comprised of caucuses that include environmental groups, drinking water groups, local agencies, agriculture and water supply providers who all have diverse opinions on the topic of how to do groundwater recharge. Right.

But all agree that it needs to be done in ever increasing manner to make sure the San Joaquin valley stays sustainable in the long term. And so we appreciate this conversation happening today. We know there's a lot of policies that are going to be discussed this year and we look forward to working together. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else? Going once, going twice, thrice. We'll stand in adjournment. Thank you all.