County's groundwater management plans too vague for some
Chico Enterprise Record - 1/20/03
By Heather Hacking, staff writer

Butte County is currently working toward a plan for groundwater management. The goal is to ensure pumping in one place doesn't affect wells somewhere else.

But at a League of Women Voters meeting Thursday, members questioned whether the work in progress is too vague.

Toccoy Dudley of the Department of Water Resources, and Vickie Newlin of the county Department of Water and Resource Conservation, have worked with a focus group to come up with a draft groundwater management plan.

Glenn County recently came up with a similar plan, which has been in place about two years. The basic principle is groundwater pumping is allowed as long as it does not impact others.

Glenn County was divided into 17 sub-basins, with advisory boards that meet periodically. Each sub-basin sets up its own criteria for what it thinks are unacceptable changes to the groundwater aquifer. If a problem arises, the sub-group tries to see if it can work things out.

If that doesn't work, the problem can be brought to a higher water management authority within the county.

The Glenn County program is set up so it can be fine-tuned as more is learned about the groundwater system and opinions change locally about how it should be managed.

Butte County is trying to work up something similar, however there is quite a lot of work to be done to devise a plan most people can agree upon.

Butte County has done extensive water monitoring for the past five years and is just now gearing up to put a management plan in place. They may model the plan after Glenn County, but need a lot more input to see if that's what Butte County water users want.

Dudley said there is a lot of talk about "safe yield," which means how much groundwater can safely be pumped over a long-term period of time. The problem is aquifers will fluctuate and water is constantly percolating.

Dudley said when considering safe yield, water managers must consider how expensive it is for growers to pump water. The level of the groundwater will also be monitored.

Underneath the groundwater in the underground system is a layer of salt water. If the aquifer is over-pumped, wells might begin to suck in salty water.

A plan to address salinity will need to be worked out.

Water managers are also concerned with subsistence, which is when over-pumping occurs and the land compacts, lowering the elevation. This is costly because infrastructure like irrigation canals and wells can be damaged.

Newlin and Toccoy have recommended the Board of Supervisors pass a law based on Glenn County's model to create a management plan. They said details of how that plan would be run could then follow.

The Natural Resources committee of the League of Women Voters then read through Butte County's draft and found many places they wanted more clarification.

Among the major points of concern were:

- No description exists for how water advisory members would be selected. The league wanted to make sure special interests weren't over-represented.

- The plan was incomplete and does not address a lot of specifics the league thinks should be clarified before a "skeleton" ordinance is approved by the Board of Supervisors.

- The draft plan does not lay out specific fines if the groundwater management plan is disregarded.

League committee chairman Bruce Smith said he wanted more safeguards for water quality. He said the plan on the table calls for monitoring salt content in groundwater. However, he wants monitoring of other contaminants such as Mercury and hazards from the old Chico burn dump.

Newlin said the ordinance, as drafted, is purposely vague because the county wants to see what local residents want in the plan.

Some in the audience wished the county would figure out the specifics before asking for any sort of approval from the county.

Currently residential wells are exempt from the proposed ordinance.

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