## Facts

- Environmental organizations alleged that groundwater pumping near the Scott River in Siskiyou County reduced instream flows, impairing public trust uses of the river.
- The Scott River is a tributary of the Klamath River and a navigable waterway for purposes of the public trust doctrine.
- Plaintiffs sued the State Water Resources Control Board and Siskiyou County, asserting that well permitting and groundwater pumping were occurring without adequate consideration of impacts on the Scott River.
- The case proceeded as a request for declaratory relief on whether the public trust doctrine reaches groundwater extraction that affects navigable waters and whether the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) displaced those duties.
- The trial court declared that the public trust doctrine applies to groundwater pumping to the extent it adversely affects the Scott River and that SGMA did not eliminate those obligations.
- Siskiyou County appealed; the appellate court emphasized the absence of a concrete challenge to any specific well, permit, or proven public trust violation.

## Issues

1. Whether the public trust doctrine applies to groundwater extraction when pumping negatively impacts a navigable waterway and its public trust uses.
2. Whether SGMA abrogated, displaced, or otherwise eliminated state or local public trust obligations in regulating groundwater that affects a navigable waterway.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal affirmed the declaratory judgment.
- The court held the public trust doctrine applies to groundwater extraction to the extent pumping harms a navigable waterway and its public trust uses.
- The court rejected a categorical surface-water/groundwater divide, treating the controlling consideration as the impact on the public trust resource.
- The court held SGMA did not abrogate or supersede the public trust doctrine, finding no legislative intent to release the Scott River from the public trust or dissolve public trust obligations.
- The ruling was limited to the existence and continued force of public trust duties; it did not find a specific impairment, invalidate any well permits, or order particular regulatory actions.

## Legal Principles

- The public trust doctrine protects navigable waters and their public trust uses from governmental decisions that allow harmful interference, even when the harmful activity is groundwater extraction hydrologically connected to the navigable waterway.
- The relevant inquiry is the effect of the activity on the navigable public trust resource, not whether the activity involves surface diversion or groundwater pumping.
- Public entities, including the State Water Resources Control Board and counties acting through well permitting and related regulation, must consider and protect public trust uses when their decisions may impair navigable waters.
- SGMA establishes a statutory groundwater management framework but does not, without clear legislative language, impliedly repeal or displace the public trust doctrine or the duty to consider public trust impacts.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed a narrow declaration that public trust duties extend to groundwater pumping that diminishes flows in a navigable river and that SGMA leaves those duties in place, requiring state and local regulators to consider public trust impacts when governing interconnected groundwater extraction.


Env't L. Found. v. State Water Res. Control Bd., 26 Cal. App. 5th 844 (Cal. Ct. App. 2018)