In today’s Water Works, brought to you by AquiMax, several wine country basins may soon be reclassified as groundwater supplies in the area appear to be in worse condition than previously believed. The California Department of Water Resources recently declared that 14 groundwater basins throughout the state should be reprioritized under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) and four of those are in Napa and Sonoma Counties.
The possible reprioritization would require compliance with SGMA and each basin would need to form a groundwater sustainability agency and complete a sustainability plan. Those requirements would come with added costs related to the creation of a new government agency and consulting expenses for determining groundwater fees.
Listen to the report.