California’s Central Coast is an expensive place to grow food. The Pajaro Valley, which stretches for 10 miles along the coast of Monterey Bay, charges farmers for irrigation water from wells, a system that’s far different from elsewhere in the nation, where growers typically water their crops by freely pumping groundwater. In Pajaro, farmers must pay for the precious resource through a system that creates an incentive to conserve water, and that also raises revenue that goes toward recycling water to use on crops. The system has reduced groundwater usage in the valley by 20 percent and could serve as a model for how to conserve water across the United States, my colleague Coral Davenport recently reported. I spoke to Coral about her reporting, and why a system created in the Pajaro Valley in the early 1990s is worthy of attention in 2024. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited.
Written by NYT reporter Soumya Karlamangla.