Sonoma County supervisors advance more stringent well regulations

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has endorsed revisions to its regulations governing well permitting and oversight, a move poised to add extra rules and costs for some rural and urban property owners seeking to drill new wells across a wide swath of the region.

The additional costs could amount to thousands of dollars for each application subject to the heavier oversight and impose new well monitoring requirements beyond the area where they were required by a 2014 state law.

The new policy is geared to align with more stringent state groundwater standards and court rulings. It sets out a path for the county’s planning department to evaluate applications for new wells and their potential impact on the county’s major rivers and feeder streams.

New wells within a certain distance of those streams — in a designated area covering more than 300 square miles of the county — could be subject to the higher level of regulations and well monitoring. About half of the wells permitted by the county over a five-year period since 2017 would have been subject to the tougher rules had they been in place.

The move comes after months of discussion by county-appointed working groups representing various and at-times conflicting interests including grape growers and farmers, environmental advocates and those in the well drilling industry.

“This is the best recommendation possible that everybody could live with,” said Tennis Wick, director Permit Sonoma, the county’s planning department.

The board voted 3-2 on Tuesday to support the regulations. The new policy will return to the board April 18 for a second formal vote.

The hearing came six months after the board imposed a temporary moratorium on new well permits while staff developed the policy.

Supervisors James Gore, Lynda Hopkins and David Rabbitt voted for the new regulations. Supervisors Susan Gorin and Chris Coursey, the board chair, voted against the policy, citing concerns over how the county defined low-water consumption and what they felt was an insufficient plan to collect water-use data.

“I think we’re missing huge an opportunity to start filling data gaps,” Gorin said.

The board also unanimously approved a short extension of the existing pause on new wells to May 18, when the new ordinance is expected to take effect should the board pass it in two weeks.

It also directed staff to bring back an implementation plan for a longer-term program, including the scope for comprehensive studies and options to fill funding and staffing needs.

Under the revised policy, new wells within the designated Public Trust Review Area — which spans 313 square miles, or 18% of the county — and that use more than 2-acre feet of water annually must undergo a more exhaustive review process. That process would require applicants provide additional information including water-use estimates, construction details and hydrogeology reports.

The review would require a deposit of $5,568 — at least $4,000 more than the current fees for well permit review and inspection — equivalent to 32 hours of work by an engineer or biologist, according to county staff.

The price is a $4,168 increase over the previously proposed fee, because of a policy change that keeps analysis in house, rather than have applicants hire separate consultants.

The shift is expected to “save time and overall cost,” and “ensure a more consistent and fair process,” Bradley Dunn, a Permit Sonoma policy manager, said in an email Wednesday.

Wells exempt from the more stringent process include those using no more than 2-acre feet of water annually and those outside of the designated Public Trust Review Area.

Those applicants would pay the existing rate for over-the-counter review — between $625 to $750, and an additional $763 to $818 for inspections.

In California, local governments must protect navigable rivers and feeder streams from adverse impacts including those associated with well-water use under a 2018 appellate court ruling. In Sonoma County, the major affected watersheds include the Russian River, Petaluma River and Sonoma Creek.

The safeguards are meant to protect waterways for public uses, including commerce, recreation, navigation and habitat.

County staff defined the public trust review area by analyzing where stream depletion tied to wells would impact fish habitat.

The area includes subdrainages and stream corridors, or buffers, across the county. Much of area is concentrated in the rural northwest part of the county, in addition to watershed zones spanning central Sonoma County into the south county, according to a county map.

More than 40,000 wells are estimated to exist countywide, according to Permit Sonoma.

Between 2017 and 2021, the county issued an annual average of 143 well permits within the Public Trust area, representing about 45% of all well permits issued during that period. Most of the new permits in the Public Trust area, an average of 129 per year, were for residential wells.

A now-settled lawsuit filed in 2021 by the Coastkeeper Alliance prompted Sonoma county to launch the push for new regulations.

They also require meters for some new wells, mirroring the state’s landmark 2014 law enshrining groundwater monitoring for certain aquifer basins, including three regions that span much of Sonoma County.

Residential wells using up to 2 acre-feet of water would not be required to use meters, an exemption that exposed the board to sharp criticism Tuesday from ecology watchdogs.

Wells using more than 5 acre-feet of water would be required to have a meter and participate in yearly monitoring.

An acre-foot is equal to 325,851 gallons, or about the amount of water used by up to two average California households in a year. The average household use is about a half-acre-foot of water in a year, according to Permit Sonoma, the county’s planning and permitting department.

Both Gorin and Coursey questioned why the county would not require meters for all new wells in light of the need for more data regarding water consumption.

“Sometimes it seems like we know more about what’s going on under the ground than we know about what’s going on over the ground because we don’t meter,” said Coursey.

Residents and environmental advocates echoed their concerns.

“We cannot go into the future without knowing what is happening with groundwater,” said Caitlin Cornwall, a senior project manager at Sonoma Ecology Center.

Public speakers also criticized the defined Public Trust Area as too narrow, leaving out waterways important for biodiversity beyond imperiled fish like salmon and steelhead trout.

They also said 2 acre-feet of water was too high to serve as a threshold for wells considered “low use” and therefore exempt from metering and public trust review.

“I think that (public trust review area) map is not sufficient, or inclusive, or fully representative of the public trust resources in Sonoma County,” said Jan Randall, a retired biology professor. “We need to be concerned about more than just the fish and I would like to see us broaden our definitions.”

You can reach Staff Writer Emma Murphy at 707-521-5228 or emma.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MurphReports.