|
Senate Bill 332 |
Senate Author: Fraser et al. |
|
Effective: 9-1-11 |
House Sponsor: Ritter |
Previous law recognized the ownership and rights of the owners of land and their lessees and assigns in groundwater, and prohibited construing a provision of the Water Code as depriving or divesting the owners or their lessees and assigns of the ownership or rights, except as those rights may be limited or altered by rules promulgated by a groundwater conservation district. Previous law prohibited a rule promulgated by a district from discriminating between owners of land that is irrigated for production and owners of land or their lessees and assigns whose land that was irrigated for production is enrolled in or is participating in a federal conservation program.
Senate Bill 332 amends the Water Code to clarify these provisions by establishing that the legislature recognizes that a landowner owns the groundwater below the surface of the landowner's land as real property. The bill provides that groundwater ownership and rights entitle the landowner, including a landowner's lessees, heirs, or assigns, to drill for and produce the groundwater below the surface of real property without causing waste or malicious drainage of other property or negligently causing subsidence, but not to the right to capture a specific amount of groundwater below the surface of that landowner's land. The bill provides that groundwater ownership and rights do not affect the existence of common law defenses or other defenses to liability under the rule of capture. The bill sets out language relating to the effect of these provisions.
The bill requires a groundwater conservation district, in adopting a rule, to consider, among other things, groundwater ownership and rights, the public interest in groundwater conservation, and the goals of the district's management plan.