20x20 | Advancing landmark groundwater legislation

Managing water resources in the face of growing climate induced pressures requires an all-inclusive approach. The passage of the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) spurred unprecedented oversight of groundwater in California, requiring governments and water agencies to guide groundwater basins into balanced levels of pumping and recharge.

Heralded as historic legislation at the time, the passage of SGMA came three years after Water in the West, a joint program of the Woods Institute and the Bill Lane Center for the American West, began a series of workshops and dialogues to map out best practices and a way forward to reform California’s groundwater management. Drawing together affected interests ranging from state water resource managers and local water agency staff to conservation and farming interests, these meetings brought in Stanford experts to share new research and led to creation of a comprehensive digital resource on Understanding California’s Groundwater that continues to serve as a valuable resource for academics, water practitioners and the media.

The SGMA legislation created a framework for California to protect its groundwater resources over the long term, but relies on a statewide network of local water management agencies to implement the plan.   Water in the West’s groundwater work pivoted to support these efforts after the legislation was passed. The program invested in convenings and research focused on supporting entities working to develop robust and timely solutions for the law’s implementation, delivering a comprehensive series of research findings and reports to guide, troubleshoot and inform water managers charged with SGMA compliance. The resources have been categorized by the following topic areas: understanding SGMA, implementing SGMA, leveraging data and addressing issues.

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See a timeline reflecting the program’s key SGMA implementation milestones:

2016-17 | Thousands of local agencies and stakeholders work to form agencies responsible for managing high- and medium-priority groundwater basins as part of the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Researchers led by WitW postdoctoral researcher Esther Conrad created a report highlighting the political and logistical challenges of the governance process and strategies that local agencies are using to navigate them. In addition, given the political and physical complexities surrounding groundwater basins, a report led by WitW staff researcherTara Moran provides a framework for developing groundwater models, a key step for implementing SGMA.

2018-19 | WitW launched a western water dashboard entitled “License to Pump” in May 2019. The dashboard is a state-of-the-art toolbox for understanding how different states approach groundwater permitting. It was created for a broad audience interested in learning more about groundwater withdrawal permitting and intended to inform policymakers currently in the process of writing Groundwater Sustainability Plans under California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

2019-20 | WitW released several research publications to guide SGMA implementation, including studies that 1) examine the evolution of groundwater governance in the state, finding additional interventions may lie ahead if basin management plans cannot meet sustainability goals; 2) look at how farmers’ perceptions of fair groundwater allocation and dispute resolution can aid achievement of groundwater sustainability by 2040, and 3) evaluate multi-benefit land use planning in California’s San Joaquin Valley, providing a strategic blueprint for habitat restoration amid land use changes. 

2020-21 | WitW researchers looked at 74 interorganizational agreements related to SGMA and the benefits of proactive management of conflict. The findings were published in a report “Dispute Resolution Clauses in Interorganizational Coordination Agreements: A Comparative Analysis.”

2022-23 | New research from Seogi Kang, a postdoctoral fellow in geophysics, and Rosemary Knight, a professor of geophysics, demonstrated a solution for more accurately measuring groundwater levels in the California Central Valley. The study, published in Geophysical Review Letters, quantifies the effect of heavy snowpack and ice in the Sierras that can skew traditional groundwater assessments.  Other research by WitW postdoctoral fellow Xiaogang He, develops a framework to calculate future floodwater volumes under climate change, and identifies areas where infrastructure investments in recharge could make a difference.

Learn more about Water in the West and other Woods Centers, Programs and Initiatives.

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