Matt Hurley isn’t one to gloss over what he doesn’t know about California water.

The Fresno-area attorney has served as general manager, executive officer, consultant or a board member for at least a dozen agricultural water districts and local resource conservation agencies across the San Joaquin Valley.

What’s more, he was on an advisory committee that helped draft one of the most consequential pieces of water legislation in California history: The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014, commonly referred to as SGMA, that for the first time regulated a much-overdrawn resource critical to the state’s economy and the livelihoods of its residents.