California Water News Daily Your Source For Water News in California
A groundwater management agreement has recently been signed by nine Inland Empire water agencies and area cities who will now collaboratively participate in a new Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) I order to guarantee a dependable and resilient water system in the Yucaipa Basin.
The nine water providers straddle the San Bernardino and Riverside counties’ line, providing water to some 70,000 people in the Yucaipa Basin. Comprising the new GSA are the cities of Yucaipa, Calimesa and Redlands along with the Yucaipa Valley Water District, the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District, the San Gorgonio Pass Water Agency based in Beaumont, the South Mountain Water Company in Redlands, South Mesa Water Company in Calimesa and Western Heights Water Company in Yucaipa.
In signing on with the new GSA, George Jorritsma, president of South Mesa Water Company, said, “I am gratified that we reached this milestone. This means that, together, we can create a water supply plan for the Yucaipa Basin to see us through times of abundance and drought.”
Governor Jerry Brown’s administration has authored the California Water Action Plan, a five-year roadmap for building resilient, reliable water suppliers and restoring ecosystems. Managing groundwater sustainability and requires local agencies to form GSAs to develop plans to being groundwater aquifers into balanced levels of pumping and recharge.
The new Yucaipa Basin GSA agreement is consistent with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). The nine water entities have agreed to work in good faith to implement the policy, purposes, and requirements of SGMA in the Basin including governance, management, technical, financial, and other matters.
“I thank the public partners for taking a major step that moves us forward to help stabilize our valuable water resources in the Yucaipa Valley,” said Dr. Robert Zappia, President of Western Heights Water Company.
The nine Yucaipa Basin water purveyors started meeting in 2014 to develop a groundwater management plan when they realized that the level of extractions from the Basin were not sustainable. Within the semiarid Basin the local supply of both surface water and groundwater is limited. The new agreement will allow water purveyors to obtain an accurate assessment of water resources.
