The Santa Clarita Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency gave a virtual update Wednesday on the agency’s efforts to monitor groundwater in the valley, highlighting a few areas where groundwater data could be more robust – with some help from local well owners.
The SCV GSA, comprised of a collection of agencies including the Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency, is one of many joint agencies throughout the state formed after 2015, when the state mandated GSAs be created to protect the state’s groundwater basins.
The SCV GSA manages the Santa Clara River Valley East Groundwater Subbasin.
Rick Viergutz, SCV Water’s principal water resources planner, gave 32 online workshop attendees a rundown of SCV GSA’s groundwater monitoring efforts, including tracking groundwater elevations and quality, as well as basin-dependent animal habitats.
“We are developing a great database of information, and we really understand quite a bit more now about the habitat for these areas,” Viergutz said. “Even though it’s a large effort, it’s allowing us to develop a very good data set.”
Some of that monitoring activity began when the SCV GSA developed its Groundwater Sustainability Plan. State legislation requires all GSAs to create a sustainability plan, intended to be a road map for maintaining a healthy groundwater basin – with vital underground water able to adequately recharge with rainfall – within the next 20 years.
The SCV GSA’s sustainability plan was approved in 2022. Every five years, the state requires those plans to be updated – and for SCV GSA, that process has already started.
Wednesday’s virtual workshop was the first of many scheduled throughout 2026 to update SCV residents and gain input on revisions to the plan before it’s submitted to the California Department of Water Resources at the end of the year.
Viergutz said that one of the main takeaways from the 2022 plan was that the basin’s groundwater is being treated sustainably.
“When looking at basin pumping, looking into the future, including considering climate change, basin operation is not likely to cause undesirable results,” Viergutz said. “There are significant and unreasonable problems that can come from groundwater pumping, like groundwater shortages, land subsidence, water quality impacts.”
Groundwater is also monitored for changes in levels of chloride, sulfates, nitrates and other substances. Viergutz said that as far as those values go, the SCV GSA isn’t seeing significant impacts.
But while the SCV GSA’s sustainability plan includes a program for monitoring organic water quality, Viergutz said, groundwater contaminants are one area with data gaps the sustainability plan needs to fill in, according to the DWR, and while the SCV GSA has been working since 2022 to fill them, there’s more to be done.
When SCV GSA’s 2022 sustainability plan was submitted to the DWR, the department suggested a few areas of improvement that could be tackled during the plan’s update, including more data on land subsidence, tweaks in the plan’s water thresholds for maintaining sustainable use – in some cases, lowering them – and the addition of a specific monitoring program for groundwater contamination.
Viergutz said there are already several existing programs that monitor groundwater contamination, including by higher-level agencies like the Department of Toxic Substances Control.
“There is a very complex structure in place already to address groundwater contamination in the valley,” Viergutz said. “I think where it’s going to lead us is that we would all create certain sections in the valley where we have special groundwater quality management areas that reflect how the contaminants are managed.”
To learn more about the valley’s inorganic water quality, Viergutz said volunteers from the canyon areas of the SCV would be of significant help.
“As yet we do not have volunteers stepping forward to allow their wells to be monitored by the GSA,” Viergutz said. “We’re going to continue to ask, and I’m just letting the group know tonight. I don’t know if there are private well owners that have domestic wells that would be open to their well being monitored.”
The SCV GSA would collect the sample and provide the well owner with those results, free of charge, Viergutz said.
SCV residents can expect more workshops coming down the pike throughout 2026.
SCV GSA’s next meeting is scheduled to be held at 6 p.m. on Feb. 4, both in person at the SCV Water Engineering Conference Room, located at 26521 Summit Circle, and online at bit.ly/4aO7ktF.
