What the Governor’s Drought Executive Order Means for New Well Construction in California

 

Last week, we sent an e-blast to our members of an article published on Water Wrights providing a great overview of Governor Newsom’s Executive Order N-7-22 and the concerns it unleased in the agricultural community. Among the many proclamations in the Order is a section pertaining to how new groundwater wells, and alterations of existing wells, are permitted.

As any farmer knows, counties are responsible for permitting groundwater wells, but the new Order now requires counties to obtain written verification from the local Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) related to three aspects of a new or altered well: 1. Is it consistent with the GSA’s plan for achieving a sustainability goal for the basin? 2. Is it “not likely to interfere with the production and functioning of existing nearby wells?” 3. Is it “not likely to cause subsidence that would adversely impact or damage nearby infrastructure?”

Questions two and three are tough for GSAs to quantifiably answer, and as you can imagine, they are doing their best to develop a process to comply with this new requirement. Yesterday, Matthew Hurley, General Manager of the McMullin Area GSA, released a memo to local landowners and stakeholders. Below are some excerpts from the memo that probably apply to all farmers, regardless of which GSA they are located.

Read the entire memo here.