Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

California’s new Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was signed into law in September 2014.  SGMA’s requirements are ambitious and its deadlines are coming quickly, starting in June 2017, so there is a critical need in groundwater basins throughout California for sound information and advice on how to: establish workable basin-scale decision making arrangements, exercise groundwater management powers, develop and implement management plans that will bring overdrafted basins back into conditions of supply-demand balance, and sustain and adapt these arrangements over time.  This paper reports on research into the groundwater management arrangements already existing in 15 California groundwater basins.  Results from this research will be used to aid local decision makers in developing and implementing management arrangements that address their highest priorities while satisfying the requirements of SGMA.  Using the institutional grammar approach of Crawford and Ostrom (1995), those institutional rules and organizational structures are being coded relative to the requirements and powers delineated in SGMA.  A combination of methods will be used: (a) coding and analyzing documents, including court and legislative records, newspapers, and other relevant documents; (b) interviews with past and current groundwater managers, lawyers and potentially judges; and (c) quantitative analysis of groundwater data in case basins before and after a management regime was implemented.  Comparative analysis of these coded data will indicate which existing arrangements come closest to satisfying the specifications of SGMA and have come closest to success in meeting goals of bringing overdrafted groundwater basins back into balance.  Findings of the research are translated into recommendations for institutional design in the creation of new groundwater sustainability agencies and groundwater sustainability plans mandated under SGMA.