GOVERNING GROUNDWATER
Sonoma County will be facing in the next six months important decisions about groundwater. It is vitally important that the public be given a voice in these determinations, involving the composition and voting rights of new agencies regulating groundwater in Sonoma County under California’s new Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA. Over the last year and one half, a working group of representatives of Sonoma County and other public entities have been meeting to consider these questions. These have not been public meetings and little is known about them (Editor’s note: Sonoma West Times and News attended a public workshop on Monday, July 11 held in Santa Rosa. Additional public meetings and presentations were held at city council meetings during the fall. SWTN attended the Oct. 18 Sebastopol City Council meeting, which included a presentation on SGMA). It now appears, however, that the working group for the Santa Rosa Plain groundwater basin has determined that Sonoma County, the Sonoma County Water Agency, five cities including Santa Rosa, Windsor, Rohnert Park, Cotati and Sebastopol, the Sonoma Resources Conversation District and one representative for mutual water companies, will be the only voting members on the board of the contemplated agency. This is so, although purportedly 80 percent of groundwater users in Sonoma County are rural agricultural or rural residential users. These users are holders of overlying rights to groundwater, which can reasonably claim the highest priority of any class of groundwater users under the common law. Overlying rights are enjoyed by virtue of ownership of overlying real property. The voting membership of the proposed Santa Rosa Plains basin groundwater agency, however, is dominated by municipalities and other entities that are not holders of overlying rights but either holders of appropriative rights (users of groundwater that do not own the land over an aquifer), or non-users of groundwater. The fact that the proposed agency posits a non-voting advisory committee of 18 representatives, two of which are rural residential well owners and two of which represent agricultural interests, can offer little comfort to holders of overlying rights to groundwater in Sonoma County. Sonoma County and other members of the working group on SGMA implementation in the Santa Rosa Plains basin should take steps to inform the public and provide representation to stakeholders commensurate with their legal and equitable rights.
Matthew J. Witteman
Sebastopol
