Integrated regional water management plans: funding.

Existing law, the Integrated Regional Water Management Planning Act of 2002, authorizes a regional water management group to prepare and adopt an integrated regional water management plan with specified components relating to water supply and water quality. Existing law authorizes the Department of Water Resources to award grants to eligible projects consistent with an adopted integrated regional water management plan. This bill would require the department to develop a streamlined application process for certain regional water management groups. The bill would require, in order to receive integrated regional water management grant funds through this streamlined application process, the specified regional water management group to file with the department a streamlined application form that includes information relating to projects to be funded by integrated regional water management grant funds. The bill would require the department, upon appropriation of integrated regional water management funds, to award integrated regional water management grant funds for approved applications, proportionately consistent with any applicable statutory formula and that covers more than one planning region, with a required written agreement between the planning regions in the regional water management group. The bill would require the recipient regional water management group, within 90 days, to provide the department with a list of integrated regional water management projects to be funded by the integrated regional water management grant funds, including a description, budget, schedule, and the entities that will receive funding for each project, and would require the department, within 60 days of receiving the project information, to distribute the funding to the regional water management group. The bill would require a regional water management group to quarterly report expenditures and activities for each project to the department and would require the department, at least once every 2 years, to audit each funding area and regional water management group that receives integrated regional water management grant funds from the department.