Drought has gotten so bad in California that people are trying to steal water from the state’s rivers.
Now, those who are caught doing so will have to pay steeper fines.
Over the weekend, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new law that increases the punitive fines that can be assessed to anyone that’s found illegally diverting California’s water resources.
The bill, called A.B. 460, will increase the potential fines for stealing water from a state river to as much as $10,000 per day. That’s a 20-fold increase from the amount that the state charged a group of ranchers from Siskiyou County when they were found to have diverted water from the Shasta River.
Those ranchers, according to the media outlet CalMatters, had to pay a fine of only $4,000, or roughly $50 per person.
Analise Rivero, the associate director of policy at California Trout, a group dedicated to conservation, said the previous fine “is not precisely what I would call a deterrent.”
In speaking to media outlet The Hill this week, Rivero commented on the new bill, which her organization helped to co-sponsor, saying:
“For us, this is a massive victory.”
Water supplies in California have been greatly jeopardized in recent years due to increasing temperatures. In addition, many wildlife species that make California’s waterways home have also been threatened because of this, which has led the state government to implement many different conservation measures to try to cast a wide net.
According to the new bill, any individual who is found to violate a permit or a floodwater diversion reporting requirement for groundwater recharged can be charged a civil penalty of $1,000 for each day that they’re found in violation. That’s double the amount that can currently be charged, and it will be in effect starting in 2026.
Any infraction that’s found to violate a “curtailment order,” which the State Water Resources Control Board issues to ban usage of water any time an insufficient supply is in a specific watershed, can be subject to fines that are much higher than that.
In those scenarios, people who are found in violation can face a fine of as much as $10,000 per day. According to the bill, these people can also be charged $2,500 for each acre-foot of water that they divert.
As Rivero said of the new bill’s penalties:
“We believe that the fines are meaningful. … It could really make people think twice about violating these orders and stealing water.”
A.B. 460 was originally passed in May of 2023 in the state Assembly. It had to undergo multiple revisions in California’s state Senate, though, before it could be sent to Newsom’s desk to be signed.
There was some initial opposition to the bill, but that went away once a provision was removed from the Assembly version.
That provision would have given the water board in California the power to issue “interim relief orders,” which would have allowed them to take immediate legal action against anyone found in violation.
