Ethical Considerations for Water Agency Attorneys in SGMA’s Brave New World

The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) has created a paradigm where agency attorneys may seek to represent not only a newly formed multi-party groundwater sustainability agency (GSA)—with all of its new regulatory responsibilities associated with achieving sustainable groundwater management—but also the agencies that are regulated by the new formed GSA. The new GSAs will likely need to mandate pumping reductions from the water districts and cities within

their service areas—potentially putting attorneys that represent both the regulator and regulatee in an ethical conundrum. This panel will evaluate the ethical rules for multi-party representations, how ethical dilemmas might occur for agency attorneys as GSAs are created and groundwater sustainability plans are developed and implemented.