BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1755
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Date of Hearing: May 25, 2016
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Lorena Gonzalez, Chair
AB
1755 (Dodd) - As Amended May 11, 2016
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|Policy |Water, Parks and Wildlife |Vote:|12 - 1 |
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: NoReimbursable: No
SUMMARY: This bill establishes the Open and Transparent Water
Data Act. Specifically, this bill:
1)Requires the Department of Water Resources (DWR), the State
Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) and the Department of
Fish and Wildlife (DFW) to coordinate and integrate existing
water and ecological data to provide adequate information to
implement the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA),
improve water resource management, and bring greater
transparency to the water transfer market.
2)Requires the DWR, SWRCB and DFW to develop water data
protocols to promote open-source platforms and decision
AB 1755
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support tools.
a) Requires recipients of state grant and research funds to
comply with the protocols in order to be eligible for
funding.
b) Requires the three agencies to submit a report to the
Legislature before establishing the platform.
1)Requires DWR to create a data platform to integrate local,
state, and federal data by January 2018. Allows DWR to
contract with an existing nonprofit or create a nonprofit to
manage the platform. Specifies minimum requirements and
datasets to be included in the integrated data platform.
2)Creates the Data Administration Fund and makes funds
available, upon appropriation to DWR, SWRCB and DFW. Allows
the three agencies to receive public or private funds, as
specified to be deposited in the Fund.
FISCAL EFFECT:
1)Ongoing annual implementation and administrative costs of $1.6
million including and ongoing annual professional services
costs of between $600,000 and $750,000 associated with
creating and maintaining the platform.
2)Increased DFW annual costs of $930,000 for eight permanent
intermittent staff to coordinate with DWR and SWRCB, collect
and coordinate data, develop standards and policies, and build
and manage data systems.
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3)Increased ongoing annual costs of $840,000 for SWRCB to
coordinate with DWR and DFW to develop protocols for data
sharing, report to the Legislature, and organize, mine, and
analyze data. Increased contracting costs of $450,000
one-time and $200,000 ongoing for professional services.
This bill creates a fund and identifies potential funding
sources, but does not include any actual funding. It is also
possible that since this bill does not clearly delegate
responsibilities among the three agencies, the cost may be less
due to duplicative estimates.
COMMENTS:
1)Rationale. California keeps numerous data sets on water from
urban use to environmental use and everything in between.
Those data sets are not coordinated and as a result do not
produce a complete water information picture. The value of
these numerous data sets is diminished by the fact that they
are piecemeal and while they may address overlapping problems
of supply, use, and efficiency, they are only valuable to the
extent they touch on any specific area.
Having all water data in the state compiled and publicly
available in a useable fashion would drive water policy
innovation and likely produce many of the benefits that robust
useable data have had on energy policy.
According to the author, this bill improves access to water
data by creating a statewide information system to integrate
critical water data in a user friendly, publicly accessible
website to simplify and expedite decision-making.
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2)Related Legislation. AB 2304 establishes the California Water
Market Clearinghouse within the Natural Resources Agency to
enhance access to voluntary water market transactions. This
bill will be heard today in this Committee.
Analysis Prepared by:Jennifer Galehouse / APPR. / (916)
319-2081