What is the Ground-Water Ambient Monitoring and Assessment program (GAMA)?

The GAMA program is a comprehensive assessment of statewide groundwater quality. The program is designed to help better understand and identify risks to ground-water resources. Ground water will be sampled at many locations across the State in order to characterize its constituents and identify trends in ground-water quality. The results of these tests will provide information for water agencies to address a variety of issues ranging in scale from local water supply to statewide resource management.

The GAMA program was developed in response to the Ground-Water Quality Monitoring Act of 2001 (Sections 10780- 10782.3 of the Water Code): a public mandate to assess and monitor the quality of ground water used as public supply for municipalities in California. The goal of the Ground-Water Quality Monitoring Act of 2001 is to improve statewide ground-water monitoring and facilitate the availability of information about groundwater quality to the public.

State Water Resources Control Board