BILL ANALYSIS
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
122 (Pavley)
Hearing Date: 05/28/2009 Amended: 04/15/2009
Consultant: Brendan McCarthy Policy Vote: NR&W 7-4
SB 122 (Pavley)
Page 2
_________________________________________________________________
____
BILL SUMMARY: SB 122 would require the Department of Water
Resources to establish a state-wide groundwater monitoring
program. Groundwater monitoring could be performed by local
entities or the Department. The bill authorizes the Department
to institute a fee on well owners to recover the costs for
monitoring.
_________________________________________________________________
____
Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 Fund
Develop and maintain $2,000 $2,000 $1,000 General
data systems
Department groundwater Unknown Special
*
monitoring
Reporting $1,000 $1,000 General
* New special fund. Costs offset by fee revenues.
_________________________________________________________________
____
STAFF COMMENTS: Suspense file.
Under current law, the state has statutory and regulatory
requirements relating to the protection of groundwater quality.
Current law also provides for reporting on groundwater
extraction in some areas of the state.
SB 122 would establish a statewide groundwater monitoring
program within the Department of Water Resources. Under the
bill, local groundwater interests could voluntarily agree to
monitor groundwater supplies and report their data to the
Department. The bill sets out criteria for selecting a
monitoring party, if multiple parties wish to perform these
duties. The bill requires participating entities to begin
reporting groundwater data to the Department by 2010. The data
would be publicly accessible. The Department estimates the cost
to develop and maintain a computer system to track the
monitoring data to be $2 million for each of the first two years
and $1 million per year thereafter. Staff notes that the
SB 122 (Pavley)
Page 2
estimates for the ongoing cost to maintain the database and
review the data system seem high given that the data would
actually be generated by local monitoring entities and public
scrutiny of the data may assist the department with error
checking.
If the Department determines that there is no local entity
willing or capable of performing the monitoring, the Department
may due so. The Department would be authorized to asses a fee on
well owners within the area to recover the Department's
monitoring costs. The Department's costs to perform monitoring
are unknown, but should be fully offset by fee revenues.
The bill would also require the Department to report on
groundwater conditions every five years, beginning in 2010. The
Department estimates the cost of developing the report to be
$5-6 million over three years. Staff notes that a previous
report on this matter was developed in 2003 for $1 million. In
addition, much of the cost of developing the previous report was
data gathering and analysis, much of which will be performed by
monitoring entities under the bill.
This bill is similar to SB 178 (Steinberg) from the previous
session, which was vetoed by the Governor. The veto message was:
I am returning Senate Bill 178 without my signature.
This bill seeks to establish a statewide groundwater elevation
monitoring program and would require the resulting groundwater
information to be readily and widely available on or before
January 1, 2010.
I recognize that this bill is attempting to provide new, useful
information about groundwater elevation. However, this bill
places significant and enormously costly requirements on the
Department of Water Resources (Department) to undertake a great
deal of work without assuring any guarantees of the receipt of
any new information regarding groundwater elevations within any
basin in the state.
The Department estimates that this bill would result in costs
approaching $40 million in the first five years of effort to
fulfill its intent. Without also providing the necessary
funding, this bill would force the Department to siphon scarce
resources away from its existing core mission programs.
SB 122 (Pavley)
Page 2
The Department will continue its efforts to collect groundwater
data and to work with the landowners to ensure appropriate
information is available. However this bill would likely not
provide sufficient new information to justify the expense.