SGMA

The State of California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) in 2014, and it requires high-priority basins to become sustainable with regard to their groundwater usage by the year 2040. To accomplish this goal, several entities came together to form the Kern Groundwater Authority (KGA). To comply with SGMA, SWID helped in the development of a Groundwater Sustainability Plan that was completed through the KGA.

In 2020, the GSPs from Kern County GSAs were deemed incomplete by the Department of Water Resources. In 2022, the revised GSPs were deemed inadequate. Now, the Kern County GSAs are hard at work making changes to the GSPs in order to achieve a passing grade from the State Water Resources Control Board.

During that, SWID formed SWID GSA and withdrew from the Kern Groundwater Authority along with the North Kern Water Storage District, Cawelo Water District, and Southern San Joaquin Municipal Utilities District. Those entities are working together to develop the North Central Kern GSP, which will ultimately be one of the GSPs submitted to the State Board.

Below are links to the GSPs that were deemed inadequate by DWR. As the new GSPs are developed, they will also be published here.