SGMA Water Monitoring for California Agriculture

SGMA is California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. It does not impose one irrigation form on every farm. What you measure, what you report, and whether you have a pumping allocation depends on the basin, the groundwater sustainability agency, the water source, and the rules that apply to that farm.

What SGMA is

The law, passed in 2014, requires local agencies in medium- and high-priority groundwater basins to manage groundwater toward sustainability. Those agencies are groundwater sustainability agencies, usually called GSAs. They write groundwater sustainability plans. The state oversight sits with the California Department of Water Resources (opens in a new tab) and, in some cases, the the State Water Resources Control Board (opens in a new tab).

A plain starting point is DWR’s SGMA groundwater management page (opens in a new tab). Basin maps, GSA boundaries, and plan status are on the SGMA Portal (opens in a new tab). Those sites are the authority on basins, agencies, and plans.

Why two neighboring farms can have different duties

Basin. A farm outside a medium- or high-priority basin is not in the same SGMA program as a farm inside one.
GSA. Plans, meters, fees, and allocations are local. One GSA’s extraction report is not the next county’s form.
Water source. Groundwater, a district turnout, a river riparian claim, and a contract supply are not the same bucket. SGMA is about groundwater. A district can have its own orders and its own paperwork on top.
Well and meter. Some plans require meters on certain wells. Some accept other methods. A farm with no meter cannot invent a metered total.

What RowCodes can do, and what it cannot

Where a meter is installed, RowCodes logs pumped water. You enter an allocation for each field and water year, and alerts fire at 75, 90, and 100 percent. There is no per-well allocation and no custom percent. You can log a district delivery beside what you applied. A monthly extraction file includes metered and estimated water, with estimated water in a separate “Estimated (acre-ft)” column.

That file is a record. It does not make the farm SGMA compliant, and RowCodes does not file it with the state. Your GSA or district decides whether the format, the method, and the timing are acceptable. Metered water is totaled as metered. A run with no meter but an entered flow rate is counted and labeled estimated, never shown as metered. Water with neither is “not measured,” left out of the sums, and never shown as zero.

The same caution applies to surface-water reporting, irrigated-lands programs, and any other rule. Read the agency’s page. A longer background is What SGMA is and agricultural water records.

Records that are still worth keeping

Even when a GSA has not asked for a particular spreadsheet, a farm that can say what each well pumped, which field it served, and which deliveries were ordered has an easier conversation. That is farm water management.

Evapotranspiration networks such as CIMIS (opens in a new tab) help an irrigator think about demand. They are not a substitute for a well meter, and they are not a SGMA filing. Crop and irrigation background from UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (opens in a new tab) is the same kind of outside reference.

Questions

Does RowCodes make my farm SGMA compliant?

Compliance depends on the basin, the GSA, the source, and the rules that apply to that farm. Metered records can help you document use. They are not a certificate, and RowCodes does not file them.

Which form does my GSA want?

Look up your basin on the SGMA Portal and read that GSA’s plan and notices. RowCodes can total metered use and make a monthly extraction file. The agency decides whether that file matches the way you account for water.

What if I pump groundwater and also take district water?

Keep them separate. RowCodes can log a district delivery and can total a metered well. Do not add them into one number and call it groundwater extraction.

RowCodes documents metered pumping

RowCodes totals metered water by the source that measured it and can make a monthly extraction file. It does not certify SGMA compliance. Log in to read a farm you already run. Installers sign in on their own login.