When Don Cameron first intentionally flooded his central California farm in 2011, pumping excess stormwater onto his fields, fellow growers told him he was crazy.
Today, California water experts see Cameron as a pioneer. His experiment to control flooding and replenish the ground water has become a model that policy makers say others should emulate.
During a winter of blizzards, floods and drought-ending downpours, it’s easy to forget that California suffers from chronic water scarcity — the long-term decline of the state’s total available fresh water. This rainy season’s inundation isn’t going to change that.
How is this possible, given the unrelenting series of atmospheric river systems that have dumped near-record snowfall over the Sierra and replenished the state’s reservoirs?
Lake Powell is currently close to 180 feet below full pool and coming off a summer last year where several boat ramps were closed and owners were advised to retrieve their houseboats from the docks.
Releases from a couple of upstream reservoirs, including Flaming Gorge, were made last summer to help the nation’s second largest reservoir and its Glen Canyon Dam, which provides power generation to Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Nebraska.
Winter storms have filled California’s reservoirs and built up a colossal Sierra snowpack that’s nearly twice its normal size for this time of year. But years of dry conditions have created problems far beneath the Earth’s surface that aren’t as easily addressed.
Groundwater — found in underground layers containing sand, soil and rock — is crucial for drinking water and sustaining farms.
A recent report showed that there is not enough groundwater in a sub-basin surrounding Buckeye to provide the area with a 100-year supply.
That could be a trend seen across the West as a study from ASU found that California’s megadrought has excellent groundwater depletion.
California’s Central Valley covers 20,000 square miles and is a vast agricultural region with a value of approximately $17 billion per year in crops.
The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which has continued to increase throughout January as a result of storms battering much of the state since the New Year, might help California combat its ongoing drought.
As of January 20, the Sierra snowpack state-wide was at 240 percent of the average for this time of year. The South Sierra stations, located between the San Joaquin and Mono counties through to Kern county, reported snowpacks at 283 percent of the January 20 average.
This third year of extreme drought is taking a devastating toll on agriculture in California. We see pictures of orchards being removed, dry canals and fields that should be a verdant green now a sunburned brown. The impacts on the farm are easy to see. The effects on our communities and on the wildlife that depend on agricultural lands in production are no less real, even if they are harder to observe.
For the past 20 years, two small satellites orbiting 250 miles above Earth have tracked a stark reality about the nation’s groundwater supplies, including across the parched Colorado River Basin: The water underground is vanishing. The NASA satellites began gathering data in 2002. Since then, Colorado River Basin groundwater has depleted much faster than water storage in the nation’s two largest reservoirs, according to research that underscores concerns about the increasingly tight water supply in the drought-stricken West.
California farms grow about a quarter of U.S. food, and that takes a lot of water. Many farmers rely on water pumped from the ground. But over time, pumping is depleting the aquifers. And severe droughts are making the problem worse.
“Eventually, you’re going to run out of water,” says Don Cameron, vice president and general manager of Terranova Ranch in California’s Central Valley.
To help protect the ranch, he’s been working for years to replenish groundwater supplies.
More than 60% of California’s groundwater wells are operating at below-normal levels, endangering much of the Golden State’s population that relies on the precious resource.
Although relatively unknown to many Californians, who see water supply in terms of rivers, streams and reservoirs, groundwater is a hugely vital source that is largely invisible.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
