Page 47 - Yucaipa Valley Water District

Director Memorandum 18-022

Date: February 6, 2018

Prepared By: Joseph Zoba, General Manager

Subject: Discussion and Consideration of the San Bernardino Basin Groundwater
Council Framework Agreement

Recommendation: That the Board authorizes the General Manager to execute the San
Bernardino Basin Groundwater Council Framework Agreement.

The San Bernardino Valley has experienced historically low rainfall and hot summers, causing a
drought of some 20 years, and counting. The groundwater storage levels in the San Bernardino
Basin are at an all time low. The San Bernardino Valley Regional Urban Water Management Plan
shows that the valley does not have enough local water supplies to meet the projected demands
into the future. Statewide, this recent drought caused the Governor to declare a state of
emergency.

As a result, the California Legislature enacted the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of
2014 (SGMA), in September 2014. This act established a statewide framework for the sustainable
management of groundwater resources, which focuses on granting new authorities and
responsibilities to local agencies. Ensuring water supply reliability and long-term groundwater
sustainability has become even more important as a result of the long-term drought and the
reduced availability of State Project Water from Northern California. While adjudicated basins
such as the San Bernardino Basin Area (SBBA), including the Bunker Hill Groundwater Basin,
are not subject to most provisions of the act, water managers are expected to manage the SBBA
in accordance with the sustainability principals to avoid deleterious impacts on the basin.

In 2015, local water agencies began meeting to identify and develop a Groundwater Sustainability
Council for the SBBA, now known as the Groundwater Council (GC). Many agencies and cities
approved a Memorandum of Understanding in November, 2015, agreeing to develop this GC.
The goals of the GC formation group were to identify the water resources to ensure a sustainable
water supply into the future, and to equitably share the cost of those resources amongst the
pumpers.

The underlying principles that drove this effort were that the groundwater basin is a shared
resource, and we all have a shared responsibility to avoid the classic “tragedy of the commons,”
where this responsibility is being shouldered by some but not all groundwater producers. In the
dozens of meetings over the past two years, and hundreds of hours invested by the organizers,
two primary products were developed: 1) a method to equitably allocate the costs of sustainable
basin management, and 2) a five-year agreement (GC Agreement) that lays out an organizational
structure to administer the process.

These principles, and the procedures developed to implement them, have been incorporated into
a “San Bernardino Basin Groundwater Council Framework Agreement,” which is now submitted
for the for review and approval. Signing the GC Agreement represents a commitment to

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