Posts

Desalination: Should California Use the Ocean to Quench Its Thirst?

/in , /by /Capitol Weeklyby Aaron Gilbreath

As the state’s water supplies continue to dwindle during this drought, it’s always worth weighing the pros and cons of desalinization to meet the state’s water needs

Groundwater keeps shrinking, reservoirs keep drying. Is it time for California to use desalinization to increase its depleted water supplies?

Here we are again: California is enduring another punishing drought, this one only a few years after the last one ended, which was the most severe drought in the state’s nearly 500 years of recorded history.

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As New Deadline Looms, Groundwater Managers Rework ‘Incomplete’ Plans to Meet California’s Sustainability Goals

/in , , /by /Western Water / Water Education Foundation by Nick Cahill

Managers of California’s most overdrawn aquifers were given a monumental task under the state’s landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act: Craft viable, detailed plans on a 20-year timeline to bring their beleaguered basins into balance.

It was a task that required more than 250 newly formed local groundwater agencies – many of them in the drought-stressed San Joaquin Valley – to set up shop, gather data, hear from the public and collaborate with neighbors on multiple complex plans, often covering just portions of a groundwater basin.

Altogether, they submitted plans for 20 basins for review by the California Department of Water Resources in January 2020. Earlier this year, DWR rendered its verdict: Most of the basin plans were incomplete.

Earlier this year, DWR rendered its verdict: Most of the basin plans were incomplete. Now groundwater agencies responsible for 12 of the 20 basins are racing to meet a late July deadline to submit revised plans that meet SGMA’s requirements or risk the state stepping in to manage their groundwater basins.

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Department of Water Resources Aquifer Surveys Will Help Bolster Groundwater Supply

/in , /by /KCRAby Heather Waldman

For the past year, California’s Department of Water Resources has been taking measurements of aquifers in central and southern parts of the state. The same will be done for the Sacramento Valley over the next several weeks.

This project, which is known as an Airborne Electromagnetic (AEM) Survey, is a direct result of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which calls for local and state water agencies to work together to better understand and manage groundwater supply.

AEM surveys are taken using a helicopter that carries a special set of instruments suspended on a large ring below the aircraft, shown below.

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‘More Significant Land Fallowing’ Expected This Year with Ongoing Drought

/in , , /by /AgNet Mediaby Brian German

With drought conditions rivaling those experienced in 2015, there are expectations for further agricultural land fallowing this year. As of April 13, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) shows the statewide snowpack at just 23 percent of average. DWR Director Karla Nemeth noted that California’s current water situation has created some difficult circumstances for both rural and urban areas. Water allocations have been drastically curtailed with more action expected in the coming months to affect urban water users as well.

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Legal Aspects of Groundwater Recharge: Do We Need a Groundwater Recharge Ethic?

/in , /by /Maven's Notebook

Groundwater is one of the world’s most important natural resources, but groundwater management has traditionally been governed by lax and uneven legal regimes which tend to focus on the extraction of groundwater or groundwater quality, rather than groundwater recharge.

In a January 2022 webinar from Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment, Dave Owen, professor at UC Hastings School of Law in San Francisco, discusses the many human activities that can affect groundwater recharge, the existing legal doctrines that affect groundwater recharge, occasionally by design but usually inadvertently; and how more intentional and effective systems of groundwater-recharge law can be constructed.

 

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Drought Has Already Cost Close to $2 Billion and 14,000 Jobs, and It’s Likely Not Over Yet

/in , , /by /KVPRby Kerry Klein

A new report estimates that in 2021, drought conditions cost agriculture $1.2 billion and another half a billion dollars in other sectors. The report, written by researchers at both UC Merced and the Public Policy Institute of California,  blames these economic impacts on one of the driest water years on record, which resulted in huge water losses even after tapping into millions of acre feet of groundwater.

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California Agriculture Takes $1.2-Billion Hit During Drought, Losing 8,700 Farm Jobs, Researchers Find

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Ian James

Severe drought last year caused the California agriculture industry to shrink by an estimated 8,745 jobs and shoulder $1.2 billion in direct costs as water cutbacks forced growers to fallow farmland and pump more groundwater from wells, according to new research.

In a report prepared for the California Department of Food and Agriculture, researchers calculated that reduced water deliveries resulted in 395,000 acres of cropland left dry and unplanted — an area larger than Los Angeles. In estimating the costs, they factored in losses in crop revenue and higher costs for pumping more groundwater.

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Agencies Working to Sustain Groundwater

/in , , , /by /AgAlertby Christine Souza

A new era of groundwater management in California continues to take shape as local agencies develop and implement plans that identify how they intend to achieve groundwater sustainability goals over the next 20 years.

“The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, if you haven’t heard about it, it’s knocking on your door and will soon be pretty much a part of your life if you’re trying to farm,” said Cordie Qualle, professional engineer and faculty fellow at California State University, Fresno.

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A Vision for More Sustainable Farmlands

/in , /by /High Country Newsby Theo Whitcomb

From above, California’s San Joaquin Valley spills out of the Sierra Nevada in a checkerboard of earth-toned farmland. It’s some of the most valuable land in the world; every year, the agribusiness industry here produces billions of dollars’ worth of milk, vegetables and nuts. But the scale, and the industrial intensity, of agriculture require an enormous amount of groundwater to be pulled out of aquifers deep belowground — more than the industry can afford to pump, according to hydrologic modeling.

According to projections from the Public Policy Institute of California, between 535,000 and 750,000 acres — around 15% of the valley’s irrigated farmland — will need to be taken out of irrigated production in order to meet the requirements of the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

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Climate Change Resilience Begins With Water, Say These UC AG Researchers

/in , , /by /KVPRby Kerry Klein

On the rare days it rains in western Fresno County, the soils in Jeffrey Mitchell’s experimental fields soak up the water like a sponge. “The water disappears within less than a minute, even for four inches of water,” he said, laughing.

Mitchell is a cropping systems specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension. His quick-absorbing soils keep the rainfall from pooling and overflowing, like it does in many surrounding fields.

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