Vandenberg Village residents will receive a Notice of Public Hearing in the mail this week from the Western Management Area (WMA) of the Santa Ynez River Valley Basin regarding the proposed water extraction fee. This fee will only be charged to property owners who extract water from the Santa Ynez River Valley Basin. Vandenberg Village Community Services District, Mission Hills Community Services District, and the city of Lompoc will pay this fee on behalf of their rate payers. VVCSD has budgeted $40k per year for SGMA expenses since Fiscal Year 2017-18 and this item is already factored into our rate structure. We do not expect that budgeted amount to increase substantially with the new extraction fee.

The California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), passed in 2014, created a statewide framework to help protect groundwater resources over the long term. SGMA requires local agencies to form Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) for high and medium priority basins and develop and implement Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs) to avoid undesirable results and mitigate overdraft, ensuring sustainable conditions by 2042 for non-critically overdrafted basins.

The WMA GSA is one of three GSAs (Central, Eastern, and Western Management Areas) within the Santa Ynez River Valley Groundwater Basin (Basin). The Basin encompasses approximately 317 square miles (203,100 acres). Each GSA is independent regarding management decisions and responsibility for collecting groundwater and related data within its respective areas. The WMA GSA covers 133.7 square miles, including the Santa Ynez River alluvium west of Santa Rosa Park to the Lompoc Narrows; Lompoc Plain and Terrace; Burton Mesa; and the Lompoc and Santa Rita uplands.

For more information, please visit https://www.wma-santaynezwater.org/