… According to a study released last week in the peer-reviewed academic journal Science Advances, fresh water has been declining at an alarming rate since researchers began observing global groundwater in 2002, creating areas of “mega-drying” that cover much of the Northern Hemisphere.  … The United States, which sources half of its drinking water from groundwater, has no unifying water management plan, instead relying on a piecemeal local network of regulations. California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which aims to regulate water withdrawals and prevent aquifer exhaustion, in 2014, but the state isn’t expected to reach sustainable water use patterns until the early 2040s. 

Other groundwater news:

• Lost Coast Outpost (Eureka, Calif.): Lawsuit could force Humboldt County to regulate groundwater pumping in the Eel River Valley
• AZPM (Tucson, Ariz.): Tucson buys 21,000 acre-feet of [groundwater storage] credits to boost future supply
• Smart Water Magazine: Orange County’s Groundwater Replenishment System as a scalable model for water security