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Authority for establishing and enforcing standards for construction and destruction of water wells has always rested with the 58 counties and 429 cities in California. Where public water supplies are concerned, additional requirements may be prescribed by the Department of Health Services. Prior to the release of the 1968 edition of this report, only three counties and a few cities had adopted ordinances regulating the construction of water wells. In 1967, legislation was enacted authorizing the State (through the California Regional Water Quality Control Boards) to require cities and counties to adopt satisfactory ordinances governing well standards in critical areas. If they did not, the State would adopt such ordinances for the cities and counties. (This procedure is outlined in Sections 13800 through 13806 of the Water Code.) Today, 33 counties have well ordinances establishing standards for the construction of all wells within their boundaries. They are listed in Table 2. Six other counties have adopted ordinances that deal with specific kinds of wells or conditions (as, for example, individual domestic wells only). While this latter group of ordinances provides protection for the users of water from the specified wells in these areas, they do little to protect the quality of the groundwater resource (in contrast with the 33 counties listed in Table 2). Table 3 lists the six counties with ordinances for specific kinds of wells. Thirty-four of the total of 39 county ordinances specify the standards presented in the 1968 edition, with modifications where appropriate (all of which are more stringent than those in the 1968 edition).
One-third of the 429 cities in California have also adopted well ordinances. Many cities have working arrangements or agreements with county governments so it is difficult to state the exact number of cities employing well construction standards. Cities with ordinances are situated in the following counties (number of cities with ordinances in parenthesis):
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