New water regulations to impact well users

The regulations are part of a statewide mandate to manage underground water supplies across California.|

Petaluma resident Ray Peterson put the stakes in stark terms last week during a meeting over new regulations for well users in the Petaluma Valley basin.

“I don’t know if you’ve lived where that’s the only thing you’ve got, but it’s quite different,” said Peterson, whose Peterson’s Farm off Gossage Avenue relies on well water. “You can’t just turn on the tap.”

With the deadline less than a year away, water and land use authorities are soliciting another round of public feedback before finalizing the governance structure that will implement the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in the Petaluma Valley, part of a statewide mandate to manage underground water supplies across California.

The law will regulate groundwater for the first time in California when it goes into effect in 2022, and will give newly formed local boards the authority to assess fees, require monitoring on wells, set new standards, implement capital projects and other measures in order to maintain the health of their regional groundwater supplies.

During the meeting of stakeholders in Petaluma last week, Supervisor David Rabbitt, who serves on a county subcommittee focused on the law, emphasized that the governance structure taking shape would be one that represented the interests of the region. Local authorities, including city and county governments, water agencies and special districts, have until June 30, 2017 to set up a regulatory authority to implement the law.

“This is something new to California, something new to us, and something that is, quite frankly, being imposed on us, so we’re trying to do our best to ensure we have local control,” said Rabbitt, whose district includes the areas around Petaluma.

Signed into law under Gov. Jerry Brown in September 2014, the law, known by the acronym SGMA or “Sigma,” came as a devastating drought put huge stresses on groundwater supplies in areas like the Central Valley. Ground began to sink in some areas as water extractions exceeded recharge, causing damage on the surface while threatening to permanently close off the underground pockets that hold water like a porous sponge.

The law identified three basins out of 14 in Sonoma County that would require a management plan, including the 46,000-acre basin spanning roughly along the valley floor between Railroad Avenue in the north and San Pablo Bay in the south. The other basins are the Sonoma Valley and the Santa Rosa Plain.

A 2014 report by the California Department of Water Resources found approximately 930 domestic wells and 470 irrigation or municipal wells in the basin, based on well completion reports submitted to the state, according to Ann Dubay of the Sonoma County Water Agency.

The vast majority of residents in Petaluma city limits receive their drinkable water from the Russian River, through a pipeline traversing the Cotati grade. Yet 14 municipal wells exist to bolster that supply in the event of an emergency, which Mayor David Glass said gives urban residents a stake in the regulations.

“We want to leave it in the ground to the extent that we can,” he said.

Authorities eligible to be a part of the so-called groundwater management agency in the Petaluma basin are the city of Petaluma, Sonoma County, the Sonoma County Water Agency, the Sonoma Resource Conservation District and what was until recently a little-known entity known as the North Bay Water District, according to information from the Water Agency.

Encompassing a 27,000-acre, San Pablo Bay-fronting swath of land between Petaluma and Sonoma valleys, the long-dormant North Bay Water District recently assumed new life as an entity to represent the agricultural well users in both regions for the purposes of the new law, said Tito Sasaki, a Sonoma Valley grape grower who is representing the district during the process.

While the district’s efforts in the 1960s to build a pipeline from Napa County’s Lake Berryessa never materialized, Sasaki said the entity has now given agriculture interests a reliable seat at the table during the deliberations. Vineyards and other rural agricultural operations in the unincorporated areas of both basins largely rely on well water for irrigation and other activities fundamental to their operations, he said.

“In the case of a prolonged drought, I can see there could be restrictions on groundwater extraction,” said Sasaki, who is also on the board of the Sonoma County Farm Bureau. “If everybody has to cut groundwater by 90 percent, the cities can survive. But the farmers, if we have to cut 90 percent, we’re all dead. It’s belly-up.”

Exactly what measures will satisfy the state’s mandate that the Petaluma basin and others achieve sustainability within 20 years is unknown, but a current study involving the United States Geological Survey is anticipated to provide greater understanding when completed in 2017, said Jay Jasperse, chief engineer and director of groundwater management at the Water Agency.

The forthcoming model, similar to ones already completed in Santa Rosa and the Sonoma Valley, will show the interaction of surface and underground water and the impact of extraction or recharge in particular areas.

“Relative to the other basins, we don’t know as much,” he said of the Petaluma basin. “What we do know is, similar to other basins, it is a very complex geology.”

Possible issues in Petaluma include saltwater intrusion from San Pablo Bay, nitrates in well water in the northwest, concentrations of iron and manganese in some areas and the complexity of groundwater behavior due to deeply faulted, clay-rich soils, he said.

In addition to a governing board comprised of representatives from each eligible authority in the Petaluma Valley, presenters suggested that the entity also have an advisory committee representing a variety of stakeholders in the area, according to information from the meeting.

The 10-member board would include five appointees from the governing board and five interest-based members representing environmental concerns, a rural residential well user, a business member, an agricultural member and an at-large community representative.

“They will be an important advisory group with broad representation,” said Leah Walker, Petaluma’s environmental services manager.

The Petaluma City Council is tentatively scheduled to hear a presentation on the emerging governance structure in October, but a vote to approve the proposal won’t come until 2017, Walker said.

As the process moves along, Peterson, the latest in several generations of Sonoma County residents, said the Petaluma Valley was rife will well users who could see an impact from the law.

“Pretty much if you are outside of city limits, you’re on a well,” he said.

(Contact Eric Gneckow at eric.gneckow@arguscourier.com. On Twitter @Eric_Reports.)

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