Managing water resources in the face of growing climate induced pressures requires an all-inclusive approach. The passage of the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act spurred unprecedented oversight of groundwater in California, requiring governments and water agencies to guide groundwater basins into balanced levels of pumping and recharge.

With this in mind, Stanford's Program on Water in the West championed research focused on supporting entities working to develop robust and timely solutions for SGMA implementation. A compilation of research findings, reports and executive summaries are listed below as a resource, with the intent that they may serve to guide, troubleshoot and inform water managers working towards successful SGMA implementation. The resources have been categorized by the following topic areas: understanding SGMA, implementing SGMA, leveraging data and addressing issues.

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Understanding SGMA

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WATER QUALITY REQUIREMENTS UNDER THE SUSTAINABLE GROUNDWATER MANAGEMENT ACT
April 2019

This guide informs Groundwater Sustainability Agencies and stakeholders on understanding the meaning of "significant and unreasonable degraded water quality" named in undesirable result number 4 and provides insights about how to successfully fulfill legal responsibilities regarding groundwater quality.

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COMPLIANCE WITH CALIFORNIA'S SUSTAINABLE GROUNDWATER MANAGEMENT ACT
September 2018

This report guides Groundwater Sustainability Agencies in the process of writing Groundwater Sustainability Plans while avoiding significant and adverse impacts on surface water.

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Implementing SGMA

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TOOLS FOR ASSESSING GROUNDWATER SURFACE WATER CONNECTIVITY UNDER THE SUSTAINABLE GROUNDWATER MANAGEMENT ACT
February 2019

This report summarizes key findings from a workshop with hydrologists, water managers, water lawyers, nongovernmental organizations and academia, focused on assessing, monitoring and quantifying interconnected surface waters under SGMA.

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TO CONSOLIDATE OR COORDINATE: STATUS OF THE FORMATION OF GROUNDWATER SUSTAINABILITY AGENCIES IN CALIFORNIA
December 2016

This report provides a preliminary look at whether local agencies are pursuing single or multiple approaches to managing groundwater basins and identifies several lessons for agencies and stakeholders grappling with the decision.

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THE SUSTAINABLE GROUNDWATER MANAGEMENT ACT OF 2014: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPLEMENTATION
August 2015

This report identifies challenges that local agencies are likely to face during SGMA implementation, plus potential short-term solutions to address these challenges.

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Leveraging Data

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PUTTING ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT INTO PRACTICE: INCORPORATING QUANTITATIVE METRICS INTO SUSTAINABLE GROUNDWATER MANAGEMENT
March 2019

This report analyzes how agencies used metrics in groundwater management plans prior to SGMA and identifies factors that constrained or enabled the adjustment of management actions in response to changing conditions during the 2012-2016 drought.

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PROJECTING FORWARD A FRAMEWORK FOR GROUNDWATER MODEL DEVELOPMENT UNDER THE SUSTAINABLE GROUNDWATER MANAGEMENT ACT
November 2016

This report provides a framework for model development under SGMA, offering guidance on how and when stakeholders should engage in model development; milestones for third-party model review; model documentation and archiving; and communicating model outputs to nontechnical audiences.

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FROM THE GROUND DOWN, UNDERSTANDING LOCAL GROUNDWATER DATA COLLECTION AND SHARING PRACTICE IN CALIFORNIA
June 2016

This report outlines the state of groundwater data collection, use and sharing across the state, as well as some of the common data challenges that local groundwater agencies face in implementing SGMA.

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Addressing Issues

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Dispute Resolution Clauses in Interorganizational Coordination Agreements: A Comparative Analysis
June 2021

This report examines the factors affecting the inclusion, specificity and salience of dispute resolution clauses (DRCs) as groups form multi-entity agreements devoted to developing and implementing groundwater sustainability plans to achieve groundwater sustainability under SGMA.

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DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROCESSES: THINKING THROUGH SGMA IMPLEMENTATION
October 2019

This report explores dispute resolution processes and alternatives such as mediation and facilitation, and makes recommendations that incentivize and streamline resolutions for local agencies developing sustainability plans under and the state agencies supporting them.