(a) A project undertaken pursuant to this article shall fully protect and preserve the groundwater rights of the overlying landowners and shall fully protect and preserve the water rights of the project participants. The department shall not provide funding for a project unless it determines that the project will be designed and operated in a manner that ensures that other users of the same or a hydrologically related aquifer will not suffer any unreasonable diminution of the quantity or quality of their groundwater supplies or incur additional uncompensated expense as a result of the implementation of the project.

(b) For the purposes of receiving funding for a conjunctive use project pursuant to this article, the applicant shall be required to do both of the following:

(1) Provide for a continuing groundwater monitoring and mitigation program.

(2) Limit the extraction of the groundwater to not more than the amount of water that is stored or recharged by the project participants or the amount that complies with all laws and contract terms governing the extraction, appropriation, and use of groundwater by the project participants.

(c) Persons and agencies participating in the project may not assert a claim or file a cause of action against an overlying landowner who is not exceeding either of the following:

(1) The overlying landowner’s historic rate of groundwater pumping.

(2) The full amount of groundwater to which the overlying landowner would be entitled to under state law regarding rights to groundwater and reasonable beneficial use on the landowner’s land that overlies the groundwater.

(d) The overlying landowners may not assert a claim or file a cause of action against the persons or agencies participating in the project if the project is implemented in compliance with this section, except as provided by contract between the project participants.

(e) Nothing in this article modifies state law with regard to groundwater rights, regulation, or management.

(Added by Stats. 1999, Ch. 725, Sec. 1. Approved in Proposition 13 at the March 7, 2000, election.)