Groundwater storage: beneficial use.

Under existing law, the right to water or to the use of water is limited to that amount of water that may be reasonably required for the beneficial use to be served. Existing law declares that the storing of water underground, and related diversions for that purpose, constitute a beneficial use of water if the stored water is thereafter applied to the beneficial purposes for which the appropriation for storage was made. This bill would declare that the recharging of a groundwater basin by a local groundwater management agency or a local groundwater sustainability agency for the purposes of repelling saline intrusion and recovering basin groundwater levels constitutes a beneficial use of water if the recharge is consistent with the local agency's groundwater management plan or groundwater sustainability plan.