1. Groundwater Monitoring Program fees were postponed, not approved. The board voted without opposition to delay action for about a month. Members debated whether de minimis wells—those pumping two acre-feet or less annually—could be excluded from fees and whether the resulting costs could legally be shifted to other well owners under Proposition 26. Supervisors Wendy Root Askew and Kate Daniels cautioned that removing those wells from the program could leave gaps in data needed to protect residential users. County counsel said shifting the costs to other well owners appeared impermissible; the board requested further verification and information on how other groundwater sustainability agencies approach the issue. July 8 was discussed as a possible return date, not set as a hearing date. The proposed July 1 effective date was not adopted.
2. Five per-well fees were proposed for a roughly $800,000 annual monitoring program. The proposal included a $160.16 one-time initial registration fee; a $21.86 annual registration renewal fee; a $64.82 annual extraction-reporting fee for wells pumping more than two acre-feet per year; a $117.68 annual groundwater-level-monitoring fee; and a $73.92 annual groundwater-quality-monitoring fee in the 180/400-Foot Aquifer, Eastside, Langley and Monterey subbasins. A well subject to all four recurring fees would pay $278.28 annually, plus initial registration if applicable. Applicability depends on location and pumping, not whether a well is agricultural. The agency proposed charging per well rather than per acre because it concluded monitoring work scales with the number of wells. It expects to collect groundwater-level data from a representative network of about 540 wells and groundwater-quality data at about 150 wells, rather than visiting every well subject to a fee.
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