Council hears SV Groundwater Management Plan

Sonoma County District One Supervisor Valerie Brown sat on the panel with the Sonoma City Council in a special joint meeting Tuesday evening with the Valley of the Moon Water District to hear the adoption presentation of the Sonoma Valley Groundwater Management Plan delivered by the Sonoma County Water Agency.
“The goal of this plan,” project manager and principal environmental specialist Bill Keene told the council, “is to locally manage, protect, and enhance groundwater resources for all beneficial uses, in a sustainable, environmentally sound, economical, and equitable manner for generations to come.”
Who’s using the groundwater? The SCWA says that 72 percent is agriculture, 19 percent is domestic, and nine percent is urban use. Of the total water used, 57 percent is local groundwater, 36 percent is imported water and seven percent is recycled water.
“Between our four basic regional water sources (1) Russian River water, (2) groundwater, (3) water conservation and (4) recycled water – it’s a constant balancing act,” SCWA Deputy Chief Engineer Jay Jasperse told the Sun in an interview following the presentation. “We can’t just do one thing, there’s no silver bullet and we have to implement all of the management objectives in concert, in a coordinated basis and without regulatory threat to make this whole thing work”
There are 10 water basin management objectives to the groundwater management plan:
1. Maintain groundwater elevations for the support of beneficial uses of groundwater, and to protect against inelastic land subsidence.
2. Improve water use efficiency and conservation.
3. Identify and protect groundwater recharge areas and enhance the recharge of groundwater where appropriate.
4. Manage groundwater in conjunction with other water sources.
5. Protect groundwater quality for beneficial uses including minimizing saline intrusion.
6. Protect against adverse interactions between groundwater and surface water flows.
7. Improve the community’s awareness of groundwater planning, water resources and legal issues.
8. Improve the groundwater database and basin understanding through consistent monitoring and additional surveys, and improve basin analytical tools.
9. Manage groundwater with local control and local stockholders.
10. Explore, identify and maximize non-regulatory approaches to manage the groundwater resources.
“For the first time, the state is interested in funding implementations for groundwater management and to use us as a model for the rest of California,” Supervisor Brown told the Sun in an interview after the presentation. “Water wars haven’t stopped and they’re about to heat up some more – but we’re on the front edge of looking at water resources and sustainability and we’re of the groundwater management belief.”
Hearing that, Mayor Stanley Cohen told the Sun that what he feels is most important for the city regarding this water management plan is that “conservation only goes so far and what if our ability to pump water becomes critical and what if the state says no to the funds to implement this plan – then what?”
Project manager Keene told the Sun that this plan is only “phase-one” and that funding is being sought to implement the plan.