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Draft North & East Metro Groundwater Management Area Plan 4-20 Objective V. Permits Water uses that exceed 10,000 gallons per day and/or 1,000,000 gallons per year, except for domestic supplies that serve 25 persons or fewer, require a water-appropriation permit. Some water uses that exceed one million gallons (MG) in a year may be reported under general permits. Compliance There are no known groundwater uses in the GWMA that require a permit that are not covered under an existing permit. Nevertheless, a thorough audit of water wells has not been conducted for the GWMA. It is possible that there are unidentified groundwater uses that require permits.Since July 2013, new wells that will require a water appropriation permit must receive preliminary well construction approval from the DNR prior to construction.This helps the DNR monitor compliance and assists permit applicants in the planning and capital investment process. DNR staff obtains compliance reports from the Minnesota Permitting and Reporting System (MPARS) electronic permits database. When pumping volume exceeds the appropriation permit amount (overuse), the DNR investigates and takes appropriate action. In 2012, 16 groundwater appropriation permits reported use exceeding their permitted appropriations by more than 10 percent 17.That represents 6 percent of the permits in the GWMA. Reported average use annual use from 2008 through 2012 exceeded the permitted volume for only 3 of the over 250 active groundwater appropriation permits in the area. In general, compliance with permitted volumes is high in the North & East Metro GWMA.Special circumstances may lead to pumping exceeding permitted volume in a given year,such as waterline breaks, other system problems, or one-time uses. In other cases in which permitted volumes were exceeded for multiple years, a permit holder may have appropriated a reasonable volume for the use, but a permit amendment was needed and/or may have been pending. In addition to the limits on annual volume and maximum pumping rate, some permits may include special conditions such as groundwater-level monitoring.The DNR staff is working with permit holders who have monitoring conditions on compliance with both measurement and reporting requirements. Gap Analysis and Recommendations It is possible that high-capacity wells constructed before July 2013 could be appropriating groundwater without a required permit.To fill this data gap,the DNR staff will cross-check wells in the County Well Index with DNR water appropriation permits to identify potential unpermitted groundwater use.The DNR staff will then further investigate whether any high-capacity wells not associated with a DNR water appropriation permit are being used to pump more than 10,000 gallons per day or 1,000,000 gallons per year. Some permit holders that have the required appropriation permit may have replaced permitted 17 Because water use must be measured or estimated with an accuracy of plus or minus 10 percent,overuses of less than 10 percent are considered to be within the range of potential measurement error. 78