October 7, 2016
The California Department of Water Resources provides bi-weekly updates regarding SGM Program information to its stakeholders and interested parties.

State Water Control Board Public Meetings on Fee Schedule
SGMA requires the formation of local groundwater sustainability agencies in California’s high- and medium-priority groundwater basins. Sustainability agencies are required to develop groundwater sustainability plans that will bring basins into sustainability within 20 years of plan implementation. If locals are unable or unwilling to sustainably manage their basin, the State Water Board is authorized to intervene. The State Water Board is required to develop a fee schedule for the purposes of recovering programmatic costs related to implementation of SGMA (Water Code §1529.5). The fee schedule will be adopted through emergency regulation (Water  Code §1530). These fees will accompany groundwater extraction reports required to be  submitted by groundwater extractors subject to intervention (Water Code §5202).

The State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) will be conducting public meetings beginning in October to present the details of their proposed intervention fee schedule and to outline the groundwater extraction reporting requirements for unmanaged areas (Water Code  1529.5 and 5200 et. seq.). The first meeting is October 7, 2016, and the meeting notice is available via this link: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/gmp/docs/fees/100716_sgma_mtg.pdf

The State Water Board is conducting outreach to solicit feedback on the currently proposed fee concepts. The State Water Board has prepared a draft of the fee schedule for discussion purposes. In preparation of the draft concepts, State Water Board staff conducted four stakeholder meetings to solicit preliminary feedback. The purpose of the October 7 meeting will be to provide the general public an opportunity to provide input. The meeting is for the purpose of information gathering only. The feedback provided will be used to inform development of the emergency regulations; the draft regulations will be made available in formal public comment in Spring of 2017.

Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA) Formation Notification
DWR reviews and track GSA formation notifications and updates the GSA  Interactive Map regularly. The GSA Interactive Map now shows the boundaries of Exclusive GSAs and the statutory boundaries of the exclusive local agencies identified in SGMA.

The entire basin must be covered by one or more GSAs by June 30, 2017, or an Alternative Plan that covers the entire basin must be submitted to DWR by January 1, 2017 in order to avoid potential intervention by the State Water Resources Control Board (Water Code Section 10735.2) If a basin is not entirely covered by one or more GSAs by June 30, 2017, then it will be up to the discretion of the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) to place the entire basin on probation.

DWR published its GSA Formation Notification Guidelines for Local Agencies which outlines the information that must be submitted by a local agency(s) after it decides to become or form a GSA(s). DWR will use these GSA guidelines to perform completeness reviews for all GSA notices filed after January 1, 2016. Only complete GSA formation notices will be posted on DWR’s GSA  Formation Table and included on DWR’s GSA Interactive Map.

Contacts:
Mark Nordberg, DWR Sustainable Groundwater Management Program (916) 651-9673, Mark.Nordberg@water.ca.gov. Lauren Hersh, DWR Public Affairs Office (916) 653-2639, Lauren.Hersh@water.ca.gov.

Basin Boundary Modifications
To discuss modification submissions please contact your DWR Region Office Representative:
·         Northern Region Office (Red Bluff) – Bill Ehorn, Bill.Ehorn@water.ca.gov
·         North Central Region Office (West Sacramento) – Bill Brewster,
Bill.Brewster@water.ca.gov
·         South Central Region Office (Fresno) – Dane Mathis, Dane.Mathis@water.ca.gov
·         Southern Region Office (Glendale) – Tim Ross, Timothy.Ross@water.ca.gov

Local agencies can locate their respective Region Office Representative by accessing the map-tool here. For more information regarding California’s groundwater basins please visit the Basin Boundary Modifications webpage.

Contacts:
Tim Godwin, DWR Sustainable Groundwater Management Program (916) 651-9223, Timothy.Godwin@water.ca.gov. Lauren Hersh, DWR Public Affairs Office (916) 653-2639, Lauren.Hersh@water.ca.gov.

Facilitation Support Services Available
The Facilitation Support Service Program connects water management groups with professional facilitators to support local public agencies seeking to meet requirements of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), including forming groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) and developing groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs). Facilitation support services from contracted professionals include strategic planning, stakeholder assessments, meeting facilitation, mediation, governance assessment, and public outreach services. Requests for facilitation support services will be evaluated on a regular basis and support will vary based on need and funding availability. DWR continues to accept new applications from local agencies and water management groups for facilitation support services. For more information about applying for Facilitation Support Services, please view the Information for Applicants and Supplemental Information for SGMA Implementation. To discuss applications for Facilitation Support Services, please contact your DWR Region Office Representative:

·         Northern Region Office (Red Bluff) – Mary Randall, Mary.Randall@water.ca.gov
·         North Central Region Office (West Sacramento) – Hong Lin,
Hong.Lin@water.ca.gov
·         South Central Region Office (Fresno) – Charles McKenzie,
Charles.McKenzie@water.ca.gov
·         Southern Region Office (Glendale) – Brian Moniz, Brian.Moniz@water.ca.gov

Contacts:
Lauren Hersh, DWR Public Affairs Office (916) 653-2639, Lauren.Hersh@water.ca.gov
Tom Filler, DWR Sustainable Groundwater Management Program (916) 653-5272, Thomas.Filler@water.ca.gov

Water Available for Replenishment (WAFR) Report
SGMA directs DWR to prepare and publish a report on water available for replenishment of groundwater in California by December 31, 2016. DWR has developed a white paper describing concepts, challenges, uncertainties, and a potential technical approach to estimating water available for groundwater replenishment. Public comments are appreciated and those received will help inform the December 2016 WAFR Report. Please email comments to mailto:sgmps@water.ca.gov with the following subject line: Public Comments on WAFR White Paper. For more information visit the website here.

Assembly Member Marc Levine hosted representatives of the Agricultural President’s Council to California’s 10th District to show some of the issues that his district faces.  The Associations own Director of Regulatory Affairs, Jodi Raley, as well as Director of Technical Services, Chris McGlothlin, attended the tour.  Attendees were bussed throughout the district, while being shown a wide variety of industry and local businesses.  The first stop on the tour included a walkthrough of the local Army Corp of Engineers station, as well as an overview of the Bay Model interactive map.  The map shows pathways water flows throughout the bay, as well as the different channels and aqueducts that are utilized to provide water to the southern half of the state.  The second stop of the tour included a look at aquaculture with Terry Sawyer of Hog Island Oyster Co., where he discussed the different environmental policies that he must follow in order to maintain his business.  Sawyer detailed the water quality policies that he faces, aquatic health concerns he must address, as well as the overall health of the bay that he operates in as being the primary focus of his business’ compliance.  He also discussed the rising cost of compliance in his specific industry, “When we started, permits to harvest oysters in this area used to cost $500 dollars.  Today, one permit easily exceeds $100,000 dollars.”

The remaining stops on the tour included a tour of the local Lagunitas Brewing Co., where innovative water filters are utilized to clean up the discharged water after the beer is brewed.  The tour concluded with a look into Spirit Works Distillery, and dinner at Zazu Kitchen & Farm where locally grown ingredients are utilized in dishes served.  Overall it was a great tour, with a chance for attendees to relate to regulatory issues that businesses face in the 10th District.  The Association would like to thank Assemblyman Levine for taking the time to connect with folks from the agricultural industry.

In a move that could have significant impact on certain agricultural operations, DPR is proposing a new regulation that would give further protections to children when agricultural pesticides are applied within a quarter mile schools and child day-care facilities.  The proposed regulation would require advance notification when certain pesticides are applied within a quarter mile of schools or child day-care facilities.  DPR is seeking further public comment on the proposed regulation by November 17, 2016, and a final regulation is expected to become effective in September 2017.  The proposed regulation would do the following:

• Prohibit many pesticide applications within a quarter mile of public K-12 schools and child day-care facilities from Monday through Friday between 6am and 6pm. These include all applications by aircraft, sprinklers, air-blast and all fumigant applications. In addition most dust and/or powder pesticide applications such as sulfur would also be prohibited during this time.
• Require California growers and pest control contractors to notify public K-12 schools and child day-care facilities and county agricultural commissioners (CACs) when certain pesticide applications are made within a quarter mile of these schools and facilities.

Under the proposed regulation, California growers would be required to provide two types of notifications to a school or child day-care facility:

1. An annual notification that lists all the pesticides expected to be used during the upcoming year. This must be provided to the school or child day care facility administrator by April 30 each year. The notice must include among other things:

• The name of pesticide products (and the main active ingredient) to be used
• A map showing the location of the field to be treated
• Contact information for the grower/operator and the County Agricultural Commissioner
• The web address for the National Pesticide Information Center where additional sources of information or facts on pesticides may be obtained.

1. An application-specific notification which must be provided to the school or child day-care facility 48 hours before each application is made. This begins Jan 1 2018 and must include among other things:

• Name of pesticide products (and the main active ingredient) to be used;
• Specific location of the application and the number of acres to be treated;
• Earliest date and time of the application.

At least one cotton gin could be impacted significantly, possibly even shut down, by the adoption of these proposed regulations.  The Association is currently reviewing the draft regulations and will be submitting comments

The Governor has now signed into law a bill to address “indoor heat stress”.  SB 1167, by Senator Ton Mendoza representing East Los Angeles, would require the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH), by January 1, 2019, to propose to the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board for the board’s review and adoption, a heat illness and injury prevention standard applicable to workers working in indoor places of employment.  The standard shall minimize heat-related illness and injury among workers working in indoor places of employment.  The standard shall be based on environmental temperatures, work activity levels, and other factors.  In developing the standard, the division shall take into consideration heat stress and heat strain guidelines in the 2016 Threshold Limit Values and Biological Exposure Indices developed by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH).  The bill also contains specific wording that allows the division to propose, and the standards board to adopt, a standard that limits the application of high heat provisions to certain industry sectors.  The Association will be closely monitoring the development of this regulation and how it may apply to agricultural processing facilities that operate during any of the warmer months of the year.

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) announced new requirements on the way 1,3-D (aka Telone) is managed and used in California. Taking effect January 1, 2017 the annual limit for a township (six mile by six mile area used to monitor pesticide activity) will be changed to 136,000 pounds. This is a drastic decrease given some current township limits are as high as 180,500 pounds per year.  To give a better indication of the impact this reduction will have, growers will only be able to treat about 410 acres in a township a year. Additionally, DPR announced that it will no longer allow the use of the “banking” system, which allowed for annual carryover of unused allocations of 1,3-D from one year to the next.  Furthermore, growers will no longer be allowed to use 1-3,D during the month of December, citing that the weather conditions tend to make air concentrations higher. These changes poses serious hurdles for growers to overcome, if a township meets the new threshold growers who need to use 1,3-D will have little to no options for nematode control.

Last week, 27 growers throughout the Kaweah, Tule and Kings River Watershed and Water Quality Coalitions were issued letters from the State Water Board’s (SWB) Office of Enforcement.  These letters identified each specific grower as a primary contributor to nitrate contamination within the aquifers in their areas.  The letters also “recommend” that identified growers participate in a preliminary settlement hearing as a means of avoiding the hard handed regulatory enforcement that the growers would face otherwise.  We have updated you previously on similar actions taken by the Office of Enforcement, specifically in the Salinas Valley where 17 growers were served identical letters due to their usage of nitrogen fertilizers and soil amendments to help produce the region’s crops.

The State Water Board is requiring that these growers provide temporary clean drinking water to the communities as well as begin the process of finding a long term source of clean and reliable drinking water for communities. The cost of long term sources for clean drinking water can be very costly, and so one avenue that the SWB is exploring is the development of a fertilizer tax.  Fertilizer taxes have long been a target by the Governor’s office, with multiple attempts failing to pass in the legislature.  The SWB is justifying the extortion of cited growers solely on studies that claim irrigated agriculture is the sole proprietor of nitrogen contamination within drinking water sources. The Association is monitoring this and is in discussions with some of the affected parties.  Stay tuned.

The Governor has now signed AB 1066 (Gonzales).  AB 1066, known as the Phase-In Overtime for Agricultural Workers Act of 2016, will make significant changes to the IWC’s Wage Order 14 covering all employees subject to the Wage Order 14.  Here are the important details.

Key Impacts & Changes –

• Changes overtime triggers from 10 hours per day and 60 hours per week in a phased-in approach.
• Removes exemption for irrigators, as irrigators are now subject to the new overtime provisions
• Removes exemption for drivers, as regulated by the Federal DOT or CHP are now subject to the overtime provisions
• Agricultural workers under Wage Order 14 were previously exempt from the mandatory 7^th day off. Under this Act, agricultural workers must provide one day’s rest every seven days.
  • However, there is a provision that the one-day-of-rest requirement may be met by accumulating days of rest when the nature of the employment reasonably requires that the employee work seven or more consecutive days, provided that in each calendar month the employee receives days of rest equivalent to one day’s rest in seven.

Timeline –

The Act becomes effective on January 1, 2017, as per the following schedule:

Employers with more than 25 employees:

• January 1, 2019: Overtime must be paid for work in excess of 9 ½ hours per workday or in excess of 55 hours per week.
• January 1, 2020: Overtime must be paid for work in excess of 9 hours per workday or in excess of 50 hours per week.
• January 1, 2021: Overtime must be paid for work in excess of 8 ½ hours per workday or in excess or 45 hours per week.
• January 1, 2022: Overtime must be paid for work in excess of 8 hours per workday or in excess of 40 hours per week. Any work in excess of 12 hours in one day must be compensated at the rate of no less than twice the employee’s regular rate of pay.

Employers with 25 or fewer employees:

• January 1, 2022: Overtime must be paid for work in excess of 9 ½ hours per workday or in excess of 55 hours per week.
• January 1, 2023: Overtime must be paid for work done over 9 hours per workday or in excess of 50 hours per week.
• January 1, 2024: Overtime must be paid for work in excess of 8 ½ hours per workday or in excess or 45 hours per week.
• January 1, 2025: Overtime must be paid for work in excess of 8 hours per workday or in excess of 40 hours per week. Any work in excess of 12 hours in one day must be compensated at the rate of no less than twice the employee’s regular rate of pay.

A full legal summary will be posted on our website.

Ignoring the pleas of real farmworkers and the agricultural industry, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today signed AB 1066, the ag overtime legislation.  This means that California will have the most stringent trigger of any state in the country for overtime for farmworkers, with 45 states having no overtime protection at all.  The Governor signed this bill, supposedly to bring “equality to all workers”, yet taxi cab drivers, commercial fishermen, car salesmen, student nurses, computer programmers, and carnival workers all work without any overtime provisions whatsoever.  The Governor signed this ag overtime bill in the same year that minimum wage legislation was also passed that will take California to the highest minimum wage as well as legislation forcing California to adopt additional greenhouse gas regulations for businesses in California.  California is the only state in the country subject to such regulations.  Today’s signing occurred despite numerous requests by the agricultural industry to meet with the Governor to discuss our concerns.  The message is clear.  California simply doesn’t care.  These provisions will be phased in over the next few years ending with the overtime provisions to be triggered at 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week.

Association President/CEO Roger Isom testified before the Governing Board of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District in support of a collaborative effort to bring additional incentive funds to California for businesses throughout the state.  Incentive funds have been used by farmers and agricultural processing facilities for the past several years to replace irrigation pump engines, tractors, loaders, harvesters and trucks.  But there isn’t enough money to meet all of the needs that have been identified.  The use of incentive monies has proven to be the most successful and cost effective means to reduce air pollution emissions and improve air quality in the history of the Clean Air Act.  Isom testified “nowhere has this been more evident than with the use of incentives to replace, repower or retrofit farm equipment.  In 2008, the California Air Resources Board set in motion a plan to regulate farm equipment beginning on January 1, 2014 and achieve to 5 to 10 tons of NOx emissions reductions by December 31, 2017.  Through the use of incentive monies, the State of California has already reduced farm equipment emissions by more than 10 tons as of today on a voluntary basis, thereby proving incentive programs work.  Our organizations wholeheartedly support the incentive program approach and commit our resources to assisting the District and the State in the search for more incentive funds!”

The Pink Bollworm Program under the California Department of Food and Agriculture has released their final mapped numbers for 2016.  While the drought is not over, for the first time in six years, cotton acreage has increased.  Final acreage numbers for California put Pima at 152,630 acres and upland at 66,353 acres for a total of 218,713 acres statewide.

This represents a 31% increase in Pima acreage and a 44% increase in upland acreage as compared to 2015.  This represents a 35% increase in overall cotton acreage for 2016.

*click on the graph to enlarge