Blog: Storing California’s water in the ground
Groundwater depletion has been an acknowledged fact in California for decades, but for a long time it was stuffed into a thick file labeled “Something Somebody Oughta Do Something About Sometime.” That changed forever in 2014, when the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act was passed by the state government. SGMA (pronounced sigma) has a goal of groundwater sustainability by 2040. That means less water pumped out of the ground, and in many parts of state, that will mean less agriculture. Estimates of the amount of land that will have to be fallowed range up to 900,000 or 1 million acres.