From the 1950s through the 1990s, as farms, mines, and cities in the Southwest pumped increasing amounts of groundwater, the aquifers became overdrafted. One important way that the Arizona Groundwater Management Act of 1980 sought to reduce groundwater overdraft was by importing water from the Colorado River via the Central Arizona Project (CAP) canal. When […]

California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) is a complex program with a new language that must be mastered by consultants, basin managers, and stakeholders alike. When California first embarked upon the SGMA journey five years ago, there was a lot of trepidation about implementing this bold and untested groundwater management program. M&A’s SGMA team has […]

California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) passed in 2014 requires high- and medium-priority basins to form Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) and develop Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs). The steps in the GSP development process, shown below, begin with establishing and defining the role of a local advisory committee. Development of the Santa Cruz Mid-County Basin GSP […]

We residents of southern Arizona have a unique relationship with water.  Our water supplies are unseen – pumped from vast underground aquifers or piped hundreds of miles from the Colorado River.  Lacking natural lakes and rivers and with scant rainfall, we invest in backyard pools and irrigated landscapes.  This combination of scarcity and dependency reminds […]

By:  Gary Woodard, Senior Water Policy & Economics Consultant, Montgomery & Associates Arturo Gabaldon, President, Community Water Company of Green Valley Community Water Company of Green Valley (CWC) is a non-profit public service corporation serving customers in Green Valley and Sahuarita for over 40 years.  In July 2015, CWC filed a rate case with the […]

At Montgomery & Associates, our expertise is groundwater.  For more than 30 years, we have helped our clients develop, protect, and sustain this limited resource in arid regions of the western US and South America.  In recent years, as local groundwater supplies are stretched, our clients’ approach to water planning is expanding to all types […]

As a result of this analysis, M&A obtained regulatory approval to use low-flow sampling methods for long-term monitoring, reducing sampling costs by 75 percent. M&A recently had the opportunity to challenge a long-established practice that hydrologists have applied when collecting groundwater samples. This practice, which has been largely driven by environmental regulators, involves “purging” three […]

California’s new funding paradigm for water storage infrastructure requires that projects provide environmental benefits as well as hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of new storage. How will the state reconcile this apparent paradox? The answer is via the Water Storage Investment Program (WSIP). This carefully designed, competitive program includes long-term, state agency oversight to ensure […]

This is Part 1 of two articles on grouted-in pressure transducers. Part 2 will present some case studies to show some innovative applications of this technology. Grouted-in transducers allow the monitoring of pressure heads in multiple aquifer zones — without the costs or regulatory requirements of wells. First introduced in the 1960s, fully grouted pressure […]

Matthew Weber, Ph.D., is a hydrologist and water resources economist who recently joined M&A. During his previous employment at the USEPA, he served as a principal investigator for a study that examines how the public values ecosystem services associated with the Santa Cruz River. This Hydro Note recaps some highlights of this study, which is […]