Sustainable groundwater management: small farms: fees.

Existing law, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, requires all groundwater basins designated as high- or medium-priority basins by the Department of Water Resources to be managed under a groundwater sustainability plan or coordinated groundwater plans, except as specified. Existing law authorizes any local agency or combination of local agencies overlying a groundwater basin to decide to become a groundwater sustainability agency for that basin and imposes specified duties upon that agency or combination of agencies, as provided. Existing law authorizes a groundwater sustainability agency that adopts a groundwater sustainability plan to impose fees on the extraction of groundwater from the basin to fund costs of groundwater management, as specified. This bill would require a groundwater sustainability agency to consider the efforts of small farms, as defined, that recharge groundwater into the basin upon which their property is located when imposing or increasing fees.