California to Regulate Groundwater in 2015

California’s drought prompted the Legislature into action in 2014, leading lawmakers to regulate groundwater for the first time. The state will begin the long process of regulating groundwater for the first time in the state’s history under three new laws that require local agencies to create sustainable groundwater management plans to ensure priority basins are sustainable by 2040.

Since the state’s founding, water has been considered a property right; landowners have been able to pump as much water from the ground as they want. But increasing reliance on underground water, particularly during droughts, has led to more pumping from some basins than what is naturally being replaced.

On 16 September 2014, California Governor Jerry Brown signed three companion bills, The three bills: SB 1168, AB 1739 and SB 1319, which compose the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (the Act) create the first comprehensive framework for regulating groundwater in California, placing managerial and monitoring responsibilities in the hands of local agencies while also creating mechanisms under which state agencies may oversee and potentially even intervene in groundwater management. With the Act to go into effect on 1 January 2015, and numerous implementation deadlines, stakeholders throughout the state should prepare for increased regulation, management, and oversight.

The Act requires the establishment of groundwater sustainability agencies (GSA) for groundwater basins in the state. By 31 January 2015, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) will classify each groundwater basin (as identified by DWR Bulletin 118) as high, medium, low or very low priority. GSAs responsible for high- and medium-priority groundwater basins must create and implement a groundwater sustainability plan (GSP) for their basins. Groundwater basins, or portions of groundwater basins, which are subject to a previous groundwater adjudication are exempt from the GSP requirement.

Once formed, GSAs will have broad groundwater management and investigatory powers to prepare and execute the GSP. GSAs may inspect property or facilities to ensure the requirements of the GSP are being met, including use of surface waters. Further, the GSA will have the authority to regulate and limit groundwater extractions, require the submission of annual extraction reports or impose well spacing requirements, among other substantial powers.

The Act requires that GSPs be designed to achieve “sustainable groundwater management” for the basin within 20 years of implementation. “Sustainable groundwater management” is defined as the maintenance of groundwater use in a manner that does not cause “undesirable results.” An undesirable result is the occurrence of at least one of the following:

  • Chronic lowering of groundwater levels, indicating a significant and unreasonable depletion of supply.
  • Significant and unreasonable reduction of groundwater storage.
  • Significant and unreasonable seawater intrusion.
  • Significant and unreasonable degradation in water quality.
  • Significant and unreasonable land subsidence that substantially interferes with surface land uses.
  • Surface water depletions that have significant and unreasonable adverse impacts on beneficial uses of the surface water.

About $10 billion = The 2014 Corporate EHS Non-compliance and Fines Cost

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its annual enforcement and compliance results revealing both the cleanup improvements as well as compliance fines industries have made in 2014. In this report, the agency focused on large, high impact enforcement cases. Environmental Cleanup Improvements:

  • Reductions of an estimated 141 million pounds of air pollutants, including 6.7 million pounds of air toxics.
  • Reductions of approximately 337 million pounds of water pollutants.
  • Clean up of an estimated 856 million cubic yards of contaminated water/aquifers.

Investment and Fines
Enforcement guidelines this year required companies to invest more than $9.7 billion in actions and equipment to control pollution as well as clean up contaminated sites. EPA’s non-compliant cases resulted in $163 million in combined federal administrative, civil judicial penalties, and criminal fines. EPA holds criminal violators accountable that threaten the health and safety of American residents.

“Despite challenges posed by budget cuts and a government shutdown, we secured major settlements in key industry sectors and brought criminal violators to justice. This work resulted in critical investments in advanced technologies and innovative approaches to reduce pollution and improve compliance,” said Cynthia Giles, Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.
Companies can reduce their non-compliance risks and lower their monitoring and reporting costs by implementing enterprise EHS and Sustainability software to automate information management, compliance, and monitoring for exceedances for a fraction of what potential fines could cost them. Once a non-compliance fine is imposed the cost of brand damage could be even worse and incalculable.

Decommissioning of Nuclear Power Plants to Exceed $100 Billion, Less Than Decommissioning of Oil Offshore Platforms

The cost of decommissioning nuclear reactors that will be closed around the world between now and 2040 will top $100 billion, according to the latest annual report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). For comparison, decommissioning just North Sea oil and gas facilities is projected to cost about $70 billion over the next 25 years.
The report notes that, of a total of about 200 nuclear reactors now operating globally, about 38% of those will be shut down over the next 25 years,. About 44% of these reactors are in the European Union (EU) nations, another 16% are located in the United States, and 12% are in Japan. IEA warned that governments and their energy agencies have little experience in the craft of decommissioning—only 10 reactors have been decommissioned over the last 40 years so the report’s estimates of the ultimate costs must be regarded as a minimum level of expenditure. The estimate does not take into account the need to construct facilities to store the waste that’s accumulating at these facilities, according to Fatih Birol, IAE’s chief economist, who added that, 60 years after the first nuclear power plant started up operations, no country has yet built a permanent disposal facility for high-level nuclear waste.