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 avoid probation under the jurisdiction of the State Water Resources Control Board.
During that same time period, SWID formed SWID GSA and withdrew from the Kern Groundwater Authority with the hopes of increasing coordination between all GSAs in the Kern County Subbasin. On May 28th, 2024, the Final Draft Groundwater Sustainability Plans for the Kern Subbasin were submitted to the State Board for review. Simultaneously, the plans are available for review by the public via the links below.
The link below goes to the Data Management System, where the plans can be found, along with other pertinent information regarding the various sustainability indicators that exist.