Governor Brown has signed three bills, SB 1168 (Pavley), AB 1739 (Dickinson), and SB 1319 (Torres), into law that will regulate groundwater management. The new laws, take effect in January, target areas where groundwater basins are being depleted faster than they are being replenished.
The laws, among other things, give local agencies two years to create a groundwater sustainability agency, which in turn has up to five years to develop a plan for managing wells and pumping so that the groundwater basin is sustainable by 2040.
