By Christine Souza, Ag Alert
State agencies and interest groups are working to develop a voluntary groundwater trading program as a tool to aid water managers and farmers.
The effort seeks to protect aquifers under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act by bringing threatened supplies into balance.
“Due to historic overdraft, there’s just not enough water,” said Justin Fredrickson, California Farm Bureau Federation environmental policy analyst. “In addition to supply, we need to be looking at demand. Groundwater trading is a potential way to allow pumpers to create flexibility and manage scarcity within a basin without major new physical infrastructure. It’s really an accounting exercise.”
Speaking before the California Water Commission last week, Tara Moran of the Water Data Consortium said the purpose of the work to advance a groundwater-accounting and budgeting platform is “to make (the platform) broadly accessible for groundwater sustainability agencies and other agencies to use voluntarily to support local, regional and state water management decisions.”
The project was co-developed by the Rosedale Rio-Bravo Water Storage District and the Environmental Defense Fund, and is a partnership that also includes the Water Data Consortium, California Department of Water Resources and the state water board.
Commissioners heard from water managers from California, Texas and Nebraska who addressed water trading issues such as safeguards for vulnerable water users, stakeholder engagement, governance and oversight, and the government’s role.
Ann Dimmit, Integrated Management Plan manager for the Twin Platte Natural Resources District in Nebraska, said her district connects willing buyers and sellers and has been overseeing water transfers for about 15 years.
“The biggest piece for us is having a clearly defined set of rules, in which all growers are treated equally and those rules help us protect the environment and sometimes even the farmers themselves,” Dimmit said.
Matthew Fienup, integral to designing the Fox Canyon Water Market, spoke on behalf of the Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency. Fox Canyon intended to implement a water market as part of its groundwater sustainability plan.
“Really clear objectives are the starting point for any design process. Those require rules to achieve those objectives and an effective governance system,” Fienup said. Accurate water-use data is also important, Fienup said, adding that there must be an approach for unintended consequences.
While protecting water needs of communities, the environment and small-scale farmers, Fienup said, a disadvantaged community should not have to rely on market prices to secure basic needs.
“Once a basin commits to a regime around water trading or pumping, obviously then there need to be safeguards to protect disadvantaged communities and groundwater-dependent ecosystems,” Fienup said.
Specific to the role that government should play to enable well-managed groundwater trading, Fienup said that SGMA provides a really good foundation.
“SGMA recognizes the importance of local management and that local water users and local regulators have information that’s just not available at larger scales—that’s essential to sustainable management,” Fienup said.
Others suggested that the government has a role in providing funding for technical assistance.
Of the lessons learned, Fienup said it is important to be mindful about the financial and human resources needed to successfully manage this type of program, noting that “in most cases, these are time-sensitive deals, so we have to turn things around quickly. Even though we’re not involved in the negotiations in itself, we legitimize the deal so we can’t be slow to process it.”
