By Shoshana Hebshi
Redwood Chapter Communications Coordinator
Though the drought may be over for now, water is very much still on the minds of rural residents, public officials and agricultural entities in Sonoma County. The reservoirs and rivers are full, but the true health of our water system lies beneath the surface in groundwater stored in aquifers.
After California passed the landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014, local governments went to work to form groundwater sustainability agency boards to assess conditions in local water basins and adopt management plans that work for the localities’ needs and establish a way to achieve long-term groundwater sustainability. The GSA boards need to be formed by June.
In Sonoma County, those who are keenly interested in getting a seat at the one of three local GSA tables are water board officials, elected leaders, winery and other agricultural interests and residents who pull water from wells that tap into aquifers. But securing that coveted seat is not as easy as it may seem.
Sebastopol resident and Redwood Chapter executive committee member Rue Furch, who has been actively monitoring the formation of local GSA boards in the county, said stakeholders—residents and businesses like wineries who rely on groundwater for survival—are being excluded from having a seat at the table.
County supervisors, Furch says, are contending they will be the voice of those stakeholders since they “speak for everybody” in their districts.
“The impact of how this goes could be quite huge on folks that live in the unincorporated area,” she said. “Most of them, when we’ve had big meetings, haven’t heard of [the GSA formations] before. There are multitudes beyond that who don’t know what’s happening, and when this agency is formed and it’s time to pay the bill, they’ll say: why haven’t they heard about it?”
Without having people serving on the agency boards who are directly affected by groundwater regulations, it’s unclear how suitable recommendations to the management plans will be. The state gives the GSAs 20 years to implement plans and achieve sustainability.
Furch said Sonoma County is in good shape compared to counterparts across California in that there are draft voluntary plans already circulating locally. The county already has a lot of data from a United States Geological Survey studies that detail trends and usage. “So at least we know what’s going on down there,” Furch said.
But, she continued, it’s important to get the structure of the GSAs in place, and to get it right. “Once you put together a system, they really like to survive and don’t like to change. It behooves us to try to get it right, and we have very little time to do so.”
Residents and stakeholders need to be engaged, Furch said. Those who are forming the boards need to know that their voices are important and must be included.
“There are way more people living in the urban areas than unincorporated so they need to say to their elected officials in the cities that groundwater is everybody’s resource. We all rely on it now and then.”
What You Can Do:
- Become vocal about how groundwater affects you, especially if you live in rural or unincorporated areas. Write letters to the editor, talk to local public officials.
- Demand that stakeholders have a seat and a voice at the table when the agencies are formed by June.
- Attend public meetings dealing with water issues.
- Become active in your local Sierra Club Group.