The Colusa and Glenn groundwater authorities will host two meetings next week to discuss the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
The agencies have been working together to create the state-required Groundwater Sustainability Plan for the Colusa Subbasin and have released Draft Chapters 5 and 6, which detail sustainability conditions and potential projects.
A virtual meeting will be held online at 6 PM on Wednesday, June 28, and an in-person meeting will be held at the Sites Authority office, 122 Old Highway 99, in Maxwell, at 6 PM on Thursday, July 29. The content of both 2-hour meetings will be the same, officials said.
“As a relatively new member of the Glenn Groundwater Authority board, I can attest that SGMA is a challenging topic,” Glenn County Supervisor Grant Carmon stated in a press release. ” The decisions we will make soon will affect the lives of many people in Glenn and Colusa counties and the information we will present at these meetings is critically important for stakeholders to consider. I cant stress enough how important it is that our constituents attend one of these meetings.
Against the backdrop of the critical drought, these meetings will engage the public about future groundwater management to improve long range local sustainable conditions, officials said.
According to Draft Chapter 5 and 6, which were released on Friday, there are localized declining groundwater levels that have occurred over the past 15 to 20 years in the northwest and southwest portions of the Colusa Subbasin, mostly areas near Orland and Arbuckle, which water budget analysis suggest are caused by drought.
” A series of mostly dry years beginning in 2007 has resulted in increased irrigation demands, curtailments of Central Valley Project surface water supplies, and consequent increases in groundwater pumping in these areas,” Chapter 6 states. ” Similar dynamics exist in the Orland area, compounded by recent expansion of irrigated agriculture into previously underdeveloped lands that rely on groundwater supplies only. Localized effects of declining groundwater levels include stranding of shallow domestic and irrigation wells and increased rates of land subsidence, raising concerns both locally and more broadly within the Colusa Subbasin that mitigation actions should be taken as soon as possible.
Draft Chapters 1-6 of the Groundwater Sustainability Plan for the Colusa Subbasin can be found on the agencies websites and public feedback is critical, officials said.
Draft Chapters 5 and 6 of the GSP discuss sustainability conditions and potential projects and actions that might be pursued by the agencies. Representatives will provide an overview of the information in these chapters at the meeting and outline methods to provide feedback in the future. The meetings will also include a review of previously released chapters (Draft 1-4) and a discussion of next steps in the GSP completion process.
” Weve been at this process a long time and the planning is nearing its end,” Colusa Groundwater Authority board member Darrin Williams said in the release. ” As a private well owner representing similar water users on the CGA board, were getting to crunch time for stakeholders to get up-to-speed on SGMA and how it will affect us in the long run. People really need to come to these meetings.
The Draft chapters of the Groundwater Sustainability Plan and the ID for the virtual meeting can be found at Colusagroundwater.org. –