A. Spreading. Unless a permit issued by SBMWD pursuant to this Chapter is first obtained, it shall be unlawful for any person, as principal, agent or employee, to spread water (artificial recharge) within the Management Zone.
B. Groundwater Extraction. Unless a permit issued by SBMWD pursuant to this Chapter is first obtained, it shall be unlawful for any person to develop, dig, or drill a new well, or to reconstruct an existing well in a manner to increase its maximum capacity over its maximum capacity on March 23, 2005, or the most recent operation if the well was inoperable on March 23, 2005, or to allow the development, digging, drilling, or reconstruction of any well on land located within the Management Zone.
C. Application for Permit. An application for a permit shall be filed by the landowner or Applicant with the SBMWD on a form provided by SBMWD. Applicant has an affirmative duty to provide accurate representations of all material facts in the application.
D. Contents of Application for Permit for Extraction. The contents of the Application for Permit for Extraction shall include, as a minimum, all of the items set forth in Section 13.24.250 and the elevations of proposed screening intervals, and such other information as SBMWD determines necessary and appropriate to evaluate the application and assure that the proposed extraction will not interfere with, compromise, endanger or detrimentally or Adversely Affect the Interim Remedy or otherwise cause or contribute to the movement of contaminants to areas downgradient of the Inhibitor Wells, or increase the likelihood that contaminants will migrate past or around these wells, or interfere with or Adversely Affect the Interim Remedy.
E. Contents of Application for Permit for Spreading. The contents of the Application for Permit for Spreading shall include, as a minimum, the name of the person proposing to conduct the spreading, the time period over which the spreading is proposed to occur, the volume, location and such other information as SBMWD may determine necessary and appropriate to evaluate the application and assure the proposed spreading will not interfere with, compromise, endanger or detrimentally affect the Interim Remedy or otherwise cause or contribute to the movement of contaminants to areas downgradient of the Inhibitor Wells.
F. Fees. SBMWD may levy a fee for review of the Application for Permit and monitoring of compliance with the permit. The fee shall be established by resolution of the SBMWD Board of Water Commissioners.
G. Exemption from Permit and Related Requirements for Institutional Controls Groundwater Management Program (ICGMP) Members. By agreement effective January 1,2005, a number of local water agencies have entered into the agreement entitled Agreement to Develop and Adopt an Institutional Controls Groundwater Management Program. That program currently provides for short-term restrictions on production and spreading to protect the Interim Remedy while a long-term agreement is negotiated. The long-term agreement will be as protective of the Interim Remedy as this Chapter, and projects which are subject to the ICGMP or successors to that Agreement will be reviewed and approved by the ICGMP Parties pursuant to those agreements. As long as a party proposing to construct or reconstruct a well or to spread water for artificial recharge is a member in good standing of the ICGMP under the agreement effective January 1, 2005, or successors to that Agreement, that Party's project(s) will be exempt from the provisions of this Ordinance and will be reviewed and approved pursuant to the ICGMP or successors to that Agreement rather than this Ordinance. Compliance with ICGMP requirements shall be deemed to be full compliance with this Chapter. Non-compliance with ICGMP requirements shall be addressed pursuant to remedies provided for in the ICGMP Agreement or successors to it. In the event the ICGMP expires or lapses while this Chapter is in force, or a Party with an approved spreading or well project withdraws from the ICGMP, any Mitigation Measures, Project Re-Design measures, access and monitoring requirements, and parallel undertakings imposed or agreed to by the Party under the ICGMP shall become fully enforceable by the City under this Chapter.
H. Review of Application.
1. The review process of the application will commence when SBMWD determines it has received from the Applicant all documents and necessary information to commence its review.
2. Subject to timely participation by EPA and DTSC, SBMWD shall endeavor to complete the review within One Hundred Twenty (120) days from Notice by SBMWD to Applicant that the application is deemed complete.
3. The completed application shall be subject to review and comment by the EPA and DTSC. SBMWD shall provide to EPA and DTSC a copy of its proposed decision, after which EPA and DTSC, pursuant to the Consent Decree, shall have a minimum of thirty (30) days to comment on the proposed decision. If either EPA or DTSC object in writing to the permit application, proposed decision or modeling work on which a proposed permit decision is based, the SBMWD, EPA and DTSC, shall consult for up to sixty (60) days in order to resolve any material differences among them over such matters. Consistent with the Consent Decree, the SBMWD shall not issue a permit over the unresolved objections of either EPA or DTSC.
4. Except as provided below, Applications shall be evaluated using the Predictive Particle Tracking in order to determine if there is an Adverse Effect. Once approved by EPA, the Groundwater Model will be used for Predictive Particle Tracking, to forecast particle capture through a hydrologic cycle reasonably representative of long-term hydrology lasting for at least the proposed permit term, which hydrologic cycle shall include a wet cycle and a dry cycle, based on historic hydrologic data for similar periods, and which shall assume that the Inhibitor Wells are operated at Design Rates. Mitigation Measures and any Project Re-Design are to be evaluated using the same method. No proposed well construction or reconstruction, or future spreading operation, shall be approved if the project is forecast to have an Adverse Effect unless such Adverse Effect is eliminated through readily enforceable Mitigation Measures or Project Re-Design.
I. Permit Applications for Extraction Wells in Plume Areas and for Irrigation Use on Overlying Land.
1. Applications to drill in the areas shown on the attached map, Exhibit C to this Chapter, are strongly encouraged. The boundaries of these areas correspond to the City's estimates of areas within the Newmark and Muscoy contaminant plumes where extraction and treatment of water from these areas will slow the spread of contaminants.
2. For wells proposed in the designated areas shown in the map, the Applicant and the City may use a streamlined modeling process, to be developed by the City, to model the projected hydraulic impacts of the proposed extraction well in the proposed location upon the operations of the inhibitor wells. Such application shall clearly demonstrate that:
a. the well will conform to standards for structural integrity;
b. the water it produces will be properly treated; and
c. the well is screened at a depth and in such a manner that its construction and operation will not cause the migration of contaminants between different confined intervals of the aquifer.
3. The City shall set the permit term for such wells in the designated areas for not less than 15 years, with the option, in the City's discretion, to set the permit term for up to 30 years.
4. Wells used by overlying landowners solely for non-potable irrigation or solely for sand and gravel operations on such land, may be replaced on the same parcel without a permit under this Chapter provided that no such overlying landowner shall extract more than 250 acre feet per year from the same or contiguous parcels without a permit issued pursuant to this Chapter.
5. The City recognizes that the wells listed in Exhibit D by Assessor Parcel Number (APN) have been used by the overlying landowners solely for non-potable irrigation on such land. These landowners may replace these wells on these properties without making the modeling demonstration required by this Chapter provided that such Applications clearly demonstrate that:
a. The water it produces will continue to be used only for non-potable irrigation or sand and gravel operations on the land, or contiguous parcels of the same landowner, where the well is located;
b. the well is constructed and screened in such a manner that it will not cause migration of contaminants between different confined intervals of the aquifer, provided, however, that if the replacement well is screened in substantially the same interval as the well it replaces, the replacement well shall be entitled to a rebuttable presumption of compliance with this condition; and
c. that extractions shall not increase by more than 25% over the maximum annual production and extraction rates for the last ten years, as shown by contemporaneous documentary evidence or by an Edison Pump Test and review of electrical consumption.