Responsible Management Today
Sustainable groundwater supply for the future
Groundwater Allocation & Monitoring
Over the last two and a half years, Merced Irrigation-Urban GSA has been working diligently through a stakeholder-guided process to lay the foundation for effective groundwater management within the Agency’s boundary area to address SGMA-defined “undesirable results”. MIUGSA has been developing the rules, regulations, and policies to implement a program to prevent declining groundwater levels, subsidence, and other sustainability indicators identified in the Merced Groundwater Sustainability Plan. Program implementation includes allocating, measuring, monitoring, and enforcing groundwater extraction and use.
* All users of groundwater are subject to comply with measures set by the GSAs to comply with SGMA. Note that SGMA does not allow metering of wells that extract 2-acre feet (650,000 gallons) or less per year for domestic purposes such as one-acre residential lots.
The timeline highlights the key milestones since the inception of SGMA through phase one (2023-2025) of MUIGSA’s implementation of the Merced GSP within its boundaries.
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The MIUGSA Board set a groundwater allocation of 3.3-acre feet per acre over three years (1.1-acre foot per year on average) starting April 1, 2023 through December 31, 2025 and will require that all agriculture wells be registered.
MIUGSA is incorporating flexibility and tools into the rules and policies that will allow agricultural users to comply with the allocation. These include combining allocated water over multiple parcels, allow carry-over of recharged water and any unused water to future years, and accounting for supplemental groundwater from an Ag user’s water provider.
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MIUGSA has developed an online platform and procedure to register all wells within the GSA, which can be found at wellregistry.miugsa.org
Alternatively, the well registration form can be printed and filled out by downloading from the following link:
MIUGSA will continue to work through a stakeholder-guided process to help all groundwater users within its boundaries to comply with SGMA.
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Fortunately, most agricultural users within MIUGSA boundaries are also customers of the Merced Irrigation District (MID) and are typically less dependent on groundwater to meet the watering needs of crops. Agricultural users may acquire surface water or developed water supplies (water that MID recharges into the groundwater basin) from MID. MIUGSA will account for different water sources (allocated groundwater, surface water, and developed water) in the Ag user’s water budget to help Ag users remain compliant with groundwater extraction.
MIUGSA encourages growers, especially those reliant on groundwater, to contact MID to discuss potential options if the groundwater allocation is not sufficient.
*Note: MIUGSA is a Groundwater Sustainability Agency and is not a part of MID, however, most groundwater users (agriculture) are MID customers.