On Nov. 17, the Lompoc City Council held a special meeting to decide whether it should join a handful of nearby community services districts to form a groundwater sustainability agency (GSA).
The agency would encompass the Western Management Area portion of the Santa Ynez Valley Basin and includes Lompoc, the Mission Hills and Vandenberg Village community services districts, Santa Ynez Valley Water Conservation District (SYVWCD), and Santa Barbara County.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed the Groundwater Management Sustainability Act (SGMA) in September 2014, requiring local agencies to form GSAs to manage local groundwater resources by June 30, 2017, or else the state would intervene.
“We’d rather manage our own destiny,” Lompoc City Administrator Patrick Wiemiller told the Sun.
The law is intended to protect the state’s groundwater basins in the era of California’s latest drought, which is now going into its sixth year.
The meeting included representatives from each agency, who were briefed with a presentation on the complexities of the SGMA. The GSA’s board would include members from each agency and would affect not only the residents of Lompoc, but farmers, ranchers, and residents living in nearby unincorporated areas.
Lompoc relies mostly on one source of water, the Lompoc Plain Groundwater Basin, although Wiemiller said the city relies on some surface water as well.
Wiemiller told the Sun that the city’s aquifer is in “not too bad” of shape but that water supplies are not abundant.
A 2011 Santa Barbara County groundwater report stated that groundwater levels in the Lompoc Plain Groundwater Basin are in a state of equilibrium. According to a subsequent report in 2014, groundwater levels had not recently reached historic lows.
Functional details of the GSA would still need to be worked out. The first step is to get the agencies on board with its formation. Upon forming, SGMA requires that GSAs have a groundwater sustainability plan.
Mike Riley, general manager of the Mission Hills Community Services District, told the Sun that he’s in favor of forming a GSA.
In the Cuyama Valley, the community services district there is entering a similar process and forming the Cuyama Basin Water District.
Wiemiller said the City Council will decide on Dec. 6 what water district Lompoc will join.
“This is one of those one-step-at-a-time things,” Wiemiller said. “Then there’s plenty of time to work out the details.”
This article appears in Nov 24 – Dec 1, 2016.
