meeting the challenges of sgma
Matthew Fienup, PhD
Exchange Administrator,
Fox Canyon Water Market
Variable and decreasing water availability has put tremendous pressure on California’s groundwater resources. Sustained overdraft is resulting in reduced water levels and water quality, diminished stream flows, land subsidence, sea water intrusion and more. California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) imposes new requirements which seek to avoid these undesirable results.
While a groundwater market is a promising tool for basins implementing SGMA, creating a functioning market is not easy.
The Fox Canyon Water Market, a project of the Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency (FCGMA), is the first groundwater market to be implemented in California under SGMA. What began as an open, robust stakeholder process chartered by FCGMA has grown into a multiyear effort to create a model groundwater market under SGMA. It represents an ambitious, market-driven and stakeholder-centered approach to sustainable management.
