Comparing Local Groundwater Withdrawal Permitting Laws in the Southwest and California

 For the first time in California’s history, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 (SGMA) aims to empower local agencies to sustainably manage the pumping of groundwater. A notable, but often unremarked, aspect of SGMA is that it provides Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) with the power to adopt rules and regulations to establish “groundwater extraction allocations” (i.e., a permitting regime). California is the last of the seven southwest states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah — to introduce a permitting power, suggesting that the other southwestern states can inform GSAs looking to promote sustainability through the use of their new power to establish extraction allocations.