California Water Commission Approves Regulations to Guide the Sustainable Groundwater Management Plans of California Communities

California today moved a big step closer to implementation of an historic law to protect groundwater basins from overdraft, as the California Water Commission approved regulations that will guide creation of sustainability plans by local groundwater agencies. Approval of the regulations advances the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), enacted by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. in September 2014 after more than a century of largely unregulated groundwater pumping in California. Groundwater supplies over a third of the water Californians use on average. In drought, some regions rely on groundwater for 60 percent or more of their water supplies.