In recent decades, as water has grown increasingly precious, Californians have tried countless ways to find more of it and make it last longer, including covering agricultural canals with solar panels to prevent evaporation, building costly desalination plants and pulling out tracts of water-hungry grass. … In California’s Pajaro Valley, where floods last winter breached a levee along a river and submerged parts of a nearby town, water managers are testing out another idea: paying farmers for the amount of water they’re able to help filter back into the earth. Supporters like Bruce say it’s an idea that could help refill California’s quickly depleting groundwater supplies, at costs cheaper than many other water-saving measures.

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