Legislative Committee Update
By: Chris Frahm and Jeffrey Volberg, Hatch & Parent, GRA Legislative Advocates
The 2005 Legislative Session
By the time this article is in print, the 2005 Legislative Session will have ended. As has been the case for the past four years or so, the State of California is in a state of chronic budget deficits. This has caused state agencies to cut their budgets to the bone. The good news for resources agencies and programs is that the 2005-2006 budget does not cut any deeper, mainly because there is nothing left to cut. On the other hand, Proposition 13 and Proposition 50 funding is running out, with no sign of another bond to refill the accounts.
The state budget was enacted shortly after the deadline this year, earlier than it has been in five years. The Legislature was able to take a summer vacation from mid-July to mid-August. The probability of a special election in November to vote on the Governor's “reform agenda” has preoccupied the Legislature this summer.
Bills of Interest to the Groundwater Community
There have been several bills related to groundwater introduced in the 2005-2006 legislative session. As of July, 2005, the following bills have been actively moving through the legislative process.
AB 371 (Goldberg) Water Recycling. Referred to as the Water Recycling Act of 2005, this bill removes recycled water from the local government regulatory scheme and creates a single statewide process for using, managing, and approving the use of recycled water. The bill raises issues of risks to groundwater quality from percolation or injection of recycled water. As amended, the bill allows local agencies that manage groundwater basins to adopt and enforce regulations protecting groundwater quality. The bill also allows regional boards to impose additional conditions on permits for recycling projects to address local groundwater conditions.
As of July, the bill is in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
AB 1421 (Laird) Replacement Water. Existing law authorizes the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) and the regional water boards to order responsible parties to provide replacement drinking water while they are cleaning up contamination. SWRCB has interpreted this law to apply only when the contamination exceeds a drinking water standard, a public health goal, or a notification level. AB 1421 would authorize the water boards to make a replacement order whenever a discharge of waste degrades a water source beyond its background water quality, giving the water boards the broadest discretion to make such orders.
As of July, the bill is in Senate Environmental Quality Committee.
SB 820 (Kuehl) Water Management. This bill is very extensive and affects many areas of water law and management. With respect to groundwater, it requires that any person who extracts more than 25 acre feet of groundwater per year file an annual notice of extraction with SWRCB. Failure to file an annual notice on time would be considered equivalent to non-use of the water for that year for purposes of water rights determinations. The bill also requires that any local agency that has adopted a groundwater management plan update that plan every five years beginning in 2008, and file the update with specified entities. As amended, the bill exempts from the reporting requirement any pumper who extracts groundwater from a basin that is under a groundwater management plan and has a local groundwater management agency that already reports or is willing to report certain specified information to the state.
The bill is in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Contributors to the Legislative Update include Chris Frahm and Jeffrey Volberg of Hatch & Parent, GRA Legislative Advocates, and Tim Parker, GRA Legislative Committee Chair.
