The astonishing amounts of water dumped on California by a series of atmospheric rivers have been national news for weeks now.
The state’s longstanding drought has been pronounced to be over.
But just how over?
The ultimate answer lies with the state’s single largest source of this indispensable resource: groundwater, which accounts for 41 percent of the state’s average annual water supply.
“Experts say people have been overdrafting groundwater for years,” CBS News tells us. This statement would be more correct if the word “years” were replaced with “decades.”
At this point, many homes in the San Joaquin Valley lack reliable supplies of water because they rely on groundwater that has been preempted by agriculture.
On March 10, California governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order enabling local water agencies and other water users “to capture water from the latest round of storms to recharge state groundwater supplies,” the governor’s office announced.
The order specifies that diversions are to use “existing diversion infrastructure or temporary pumps” or “existing groundwater recharge locations, where available.” No permanent infrastructure is to be added.
“The State Water Board has authorized nearly 790,000 acre-feet in diversions for groundwater recharge and other purposes since late December 2022,” says the governor’s website.
In response to the measure, Dave Puglia, president of Western Growers BB #:144734, said, “We applaud Governor Newsom’s bold and comprehensive water infrastructure and management strategy. Our farms are in distress due to water insecurity, increasingly placing millions of Californians in our agricultural regions at great risk of economic harm. To adapt to climate realities, the Governor’s plan recognizes the urgent need to build new and improve existing infrastructure and to streamline and improve the practicality of the regulatory processes that govern them. Critically, that means new and expanded surface and groundwater storage to capture wet year flood flows that are too infrequent to be missed. While we have only seen this plan for the first time today and are certain to have many questions about it, Governor Newsom has given us reason to move forward with optimism. This is clearly not just nibbling around the edges.”
The recharges of a single season, no matter how enormous, will not in themselves solve the long-term problem of groundwater depletion. The ultimate answer lies with the success of the 2014 State Groundwater Management Act (SGMA, pronounced “sigma”), which sets out a comprehensive plan for managing groundwater use through regulatory oversight and assistance with best management practices.
SGMA provisions are strict and, to the minds of many, severe. Some estimates say that as many as 1 million acres in the San Joaquin Valley will be taken out of production by 2040, one fifth of the valley’s total acreage, with a loss of $7.2 billion in farm revenue each year.
