Chico, CA. In 2014, the Groundwater Sustainability Act was signed by Governor Jerry Brown to provide groundwater protection in California. But the same industrial agricultural barons are gaming the groundwater basins just as they are gaming the surface water in the rivers, according to environmental groups.
AquAlliance – along with the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN) and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) – filed three lawsuits over the past 10 days against the Butte, Colusa, and Vina Subbasins’ Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs).
The GSPs are the result of state mandates from the Groundwater Sustainability Act that requires some protection of groundwater after allowing unregulated use since California’s formation, according to a statement from AquAlliance.
“The GSPs encompass large portions of Butte, Colusa, and Glenn counties and each present specific threats to the unsuspecting public dependent on groundwater and to the streams, rivers, trees, and species that are supported by healthy aquifers,” the group reported.
The lawsuits find many failures in common. “The three GSPs as written make it impossible to reach sustainability in the required 20-year horizon, in addition to specific failures noted below,” AquAlliance Executive Director Barbara Vlamis explained.
“They all identify projects and management actions that are ambiguous and unenforceable. They may cause serious harm, and none of them will protect groundwater dependent ecosystems as explicitly required by SGMA,” said Vlamis.
“Despite common knowledge and some analysis, the Butte, Colusa, and Vina subbasin GSPs fail to adapt to serious impacts from expected climate change. “This deficiency alone in the plans leaves them unenforceable and invalid,” Vlamis concluded.
The plaintiffs are represented by the Law Office of Adam Keats.
Some of the dangerous policies and parameters in the Groundwater Sustainability Plans include:
Butte subbasin GSP (Mostly Butte County with portions of Colusa and Glenn counties)
- Discloses that groundwater levels will drop by up to 100% of historic range.
- Accepts failure of at least 7 percent of the domestic and very deep aquifer supply wells.
- Allows groundwater pumping to increase that will result in stream flow loss from 90 to 277 percent.
Colusa subbasin GSP (Colusa and Glenn counties)
- Permits the failure of at least 20 percent of domestic wells in the Colusa Subbasin, despite the requirement under SGMA that domestic wells be given priority.
- Accepts the loss of almost 1,000,000 acre feet of groundwater storage by 2070.
- Allows unreasonable and undesirable amounts of land subsidence.
Vina subbasin GSP (Butte County)
- Provides parameters that will cause hundreds of wells to fail, yet fails to disclose the quantity and percentage.
- Accepts monitoring well thresholds that are unreasonably low, including some that are approximately 200% below normal operating ranges.