As the single largest water-consuming industry, agriculture has
become a focal point for efforts to promote water conservation.
The drive for water use efficiency has become institutionalized
in agriculture through numerous federal, state and local
programs. Since the 1980s, some water districts serving
agricultural areas have developed extensive water conservation
programs to help their customers (From Aquapedia).
Ongoing drought in parts of the West could trigger water
conservation measures across seven states this year. It would
mark the first time that cutbacks outlined in drought
contingency plans drafted two years ago have been put in place.
Everything from hydroelectric power generation to agricultural
production to the bubbling fountains at Las Vegas casinos could
be impacted. Impacts on hydro generation could have ripple
effects across the Southwest, including solar and energy
storage.
The Colusa and Glenn Groundwater Authorities will host an
online workshop about a Well Monitoring Pilot Program the
agencies are implementing. The voluntary, non-regulatory
program will gather information about groundwater use in the
Colusa Subbasin while also providing participants with
near-real time access to information on well production and
groundwater levels at their wells, according to a press
release.
Describing federal investment in Western water management as
“essential,” a coalition of more than 200 organizations has
urged the incoming Biden administration and the new Congress to
include water facilities in any future infrastructure or
economic-recovery package. The coalition, including a number of
national and regional organizations plus farm groups and water
districts from 15 states, sent separate letters last week to
President-elect Biden and the Democratic and Republican leaders
of the House and Senate. The letter included specific
recommendations for the types of water investments the
coalition said could have the greatest impact.
A study published Monday found billions more could face food
insecurity as Earth’s tropical rain belt shifts in response to
climate change, causing increased drought stress and
intensified flooding. … Researchers at the University of
California, Irvine and other institutions analyzed how the
tropical rain belt would respond to a future where greenhouse
gas emission continued to rise through 2100, UCI News reported.
Their findings, published in Nature Climate Change, revealed
the rain belt will shift northward over the Eastern Hemisphere,
impacting countries in southeastern Africa.
On Jan. 15, State Assemblymembers Robert Rivas and Rudy Salas
introduced Assembly Bill 252, which if approved would help
alleviate the impacts of the Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act (SGMA) on farmers and ensure that farmland taken out of
production due to SGMA is reused to provide conservation,
recreation, or other benefits to local communities.
California’s Central Valley produces much of the nation’s food,
including about 40% of the country’s fruits and nuts and has
the nation’s second most pumped aquifer system. Its drier
southern portion, the San Joaquin Valley, has decreasing
surface water supply reliability due to frequent and prolonged
droughts, stricter environmental regulations, and growing
competition among water users. Many farmers pump groundwater to
provide their unsupplied water demand. The resulting
groundwater overdraft has numerous impacts on the Valley’s
agriculture and residents.
Throughout his research, Simon Ferrigno has seen the statistic
range from 2,000 to 20,000 liters of water needed to make a
T-shirt. Instead of numbers, Ferrigno said the focus
should be on whether or not the water that’s used in the
process can be cleaned and repurposed for other needs.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture and more than
twenty partners are hosting Healthy Soils Week 2020 to
highlight the importance and multiple benefits of soil
health on the farm to the ecosystem. The leaders in the
Sacramento Valley have fully embraced nature-based solutions as
called for by Governor Newsom in his October 7 Executive Order
and healthy soils are important for population health and
multi-benefit water management.
Agriculture uses more of Earth’s freshwater than any other
sector, primarily for crop irrigation. In places where water is
scarce, policymakers are eager to regulate water
usage and incentivize more conscientious practices. Key to
advancing these goals, however, is accurately measuring how
much water farmers are using.
Five Tulare County water districts received a portion of $1.6
million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture this month
to help farmers better conserve water resources.
With its Séka Hills olive oil, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation [in
Northern California’s Capay Valley] is reclaiming its ancestral
land with a crop for the future. … Wherever possible, the
tribe uses sustainable farming practices, and has received
several grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
Natural Resource Conservation Service for water and rangeland
conservation…
Now based in California, 39-year-old engineer and entrepreneur
Meena Sankaran is working to make water cleaner and more
reliable — by making it smarter. Using sensors and analytic
tools, Sankaran’s startup KETOS provides real-time monitoring
of both water usage and quality, alerting, say, a farmer to a
leak, or a municipality to a contaminant.
As the Colorado River District looks to quickly put newly
approved tax revenues to work on Western Slope projects, an
implementation plan offers some examples of the kind of work it
expects to pursue… The district plans to use 14 percent of
the new revenues to shore up its finances… The rest is to be
used to partner with others on projects focused on agriculture,
infrastructure, healthy rivers, watershed health and water
quality, and conservation and efficiency.
All of these wineries focus on energy efficiency, water use
efficiency, soil and nutrient management, pest management,
biodiversity and wildlife conservation. They participate in
sustainable certification programs such as the Certified
California Sustainable Winegrowing program. For each,
sustainability involves an ongoing process of evaluation and
improvement.
The public can finally get a look at how Madera officials plan
to correct severe groundwater over pumping and replenish
aquifers in that area. For some farmers, that correction will
mean pumping limits of up to 50 percent from what’s allowed
today.
There’s a concept called “demand management” in the news in
Colorado, and here’s a simple definition: Landowners get paid
to temporarily stop irrigating, and that water gets sent
downstream to hang out in Lake Powell. It’s an idea long talked
about because of increasing drought and the very real danger of
both Lake Mead and Lake Powell dropping into “dead pool” where
no hydropower can be generated.
The San Joaquin Valley and urban Southern California are worlds
apart in many ways. Yet each face growing water challenges and
a shared interest in ensuring reliable, affordable water
supplies to safeguard their people and economies. Both regions’
water futures could be more secure if they take advantage of
shared water infrastructure to jointly develop and manage some
water supplies.
Determining how much water each section of a field needs is a
cumbersome process that requires people to hand-pluck
individual leaves from plants, put them in pressure chambers
and apply air pressure to see when water begins to leak from
the leaf stems. … UC scientists are developing a robotic
pressure chamber that can harvest its own sample leaves and
test them on site, immediately, to provide the freshest data.
Two lawsuits against a Kern County groundwater sustainability
agency show the potential implications for agriculture and
other businesses with historic, overlying water rights….”It’s
one of the first groundwater sustainability plans we’re seeing
that could wholly restrict agriculture in a water-poor area,
while ignoring overlying rights and preferring other,
non-agricultural users in the basin,” [the California Farm
Bureau Federation's Chris] Scheuring said.
In the world of groundwater recharge, not all dirt is created
equal. Where, when, how much and how fast water can best be
recharged into the Central Valley’s severely depleted aquifers
has become a critical question. A new tool aims to help answer
those questions at the field-by-field level or up to an entire
county.
A new California Biodiversity Collaborative will help determine
how to carry out an executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom
aimed at conserving 30% of California’s land and marine areas
by 2030—and agricultural organizations said they would
participate to assure the collaborative recognizes stewardship
efforts carried out on the state’s farms and ranches.
If certain hay species retain more nutrients than others when
on low-water diets, then ranchers know their cattle will
continue to eat well as they evaluate whether they can operate
their ranches on less H20…. Any water saved could be left in
the Colorado River, allowing it to become more sustainable,
even as the West’s population grows and drought becomes more
intense.
Protecting intact peatlands [such as those in California] and
restoring degraded ones are crucial steps if the world is to
counter climate change, European researchers said Friday. In a
study, they said peat bogs, wetlands that contain large amounts
of carbon in the form of decaying vegetation that has built up
over centuries, could help the world achieve climate goals like
the limit of 2 degrees Celsius of postindustrial warming that
is part of the 2015 Paris agreement.
In the western United States, crops and natural landscapes
consume the greatest portion of water supplies. However,
tracking that consumption is surprisingly complex and
expensive… A recently announced web application called OpenET
aims to fill this gap for farmers and water managers to build
more resilient water supplies…
Newsom, who made the announcement in a walnut orchard 25 miles
outside of Sacramento, said innovative farming practices,
restoring wetlands, better managing forests, planting more
trees and increasing the number of parks are all potential
tools. The goal is to conserve 30% of the state’s lands and
coastal waters in the next decade as part of a larger global
effort.
New technologies intend to help farmers translate a mountain of
detailed soil moisture and weather data into informed
irrigation decisions to use water most efficiently, while
maintaining detailed information to satisfy regulators.
Despite little precipitation and a small snowpack in the 2020
water year, which ended Sept. 30, California weathered the year
on water stored in reservoirs during previous years’ storms.
Going into 2021, farmers note that weather officials predict a
La Niña climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which has brought
drought conditions in the past.
In 2012 a team of salmon researchers tried a wild idea: putting
pinky-sized Chinook on a rice field in the Yolo Bypass, a vast
engineered floodplain designed to protect the city of
Sacramento from inundation. … Now, after nearly a decade of
testing fish in fields, a new paper in San Francisco Estuary
and Watershed Science outlines lessons learned as well as next
steps in managing floodplains for salmon.
Eyes in the sky and clouds on the ground—of the computing
kind—may soon help farmers, ranchers and water managers gain a
handle on something they can’t see: water vapor.
Floodplains were the historic rearing areas for juvenile
salmon, and the remaining floodplains in California are an
important food-rich habitat as present-day salmon grow and
attempt to survive their trip out to the ocean. We sat down
with Hailey Wright, a Department of Water Resources
environmental scientist, to discuss the salmon lifecycle and
her work designing and implementing projects in the Yolo
Bypass…
The Guidebook is designed to assist urban water suppliers with
preparing UWMPs that are due to DWR on July 1. DWR also
released its draft 2020 Agricultural Water Management Plan
Guidebook related to long-term water supply and demand
strategies for agricultural water planning.
I visited in late August with Matt Angell about California San
Joaquin Valley water issues. Angell is a chairman of San
Joaquin Resource Conservation District 9, is a managing partner
at Pacific Farming Co., and also is managing director of Madera
Pumps. The conversation included discussion of California’s
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and what that will
require of growers in the years ahead.
In 2018, the legislature passed AB 1668 and SB 606, which
establish guidelines and standards for urban and agricultural
water use efficiency and conservation… At the August meeting
of the Delta Stewardship Council, council members received an
update on the State Water Board’s ongoing efforts to implement
the legislation from Charlotte Ely, a Supervising Senior
Environmental Scientist at the Water Board…
Over the next 20 years, San Joaquin Valley farmers may need to
temporarily fallow or permanently retire over half a million
acres of cropland as California pushes towards sustainable
groundwater use. … Below, the paper’s lead authors, Benjamin
Bryant and Rodd Kelsey, discuss their research examining how
conservation planning can guide the land use change being
driven by SGMA to achieve multiple benefits…
The study looked at how much water conservation can readily and
affordably be achieved in each region and industry of the
United States by looking at what conservation measures were
already working and considering how much water is being used in
every industry and throughout the country. Then the researchers
ran statistics on that information, looking for areas that
offer greater efficiency.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority last week voted
unanimously to adopt a transient pool and fallowing program and
also approve findings that the programs are exempt from
California Environmental Quality Act review — meaning the
programs are not considered to have a significant impact on the
environment.
It hasn’t always been easy, and there have been plenty of bumps
along the way, but we’ve learned a lot in those five years, and
we are happy to share some of what we learned. We are pleased
to present our top 10 SGMA lessons learned:
The veteran food writer’s new book warns that the current
trajectory of farming in California’s Central Valley and the
Corn Belt could be setting us up for collapse.
Groundwater is California’s water savings bank account that can
be tapped during dry years when water in lakes and rivers are
low. Conserving water helps preserve groundwater, which is
important for plants, animals and people.
The ‘Irrigation Water Management’ episode of NRCS’s
Conservation at Work video series details some of the benefits
that can be gained by refining water management in an
agricultural operation.
The dredging is taking place in a vast sewage treatment pond.
And the material being removed is biosolids, which is another
way of saying sewage sludge. About 3,500 tons of biosolids will
be piped from the pond this summer to be dewatered. It is
ultimately trucked a short distance and spread over a NapaSan
field where a farmer grows sorghum.
Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will again receive less water from
the Colorado River next year under a set of agreements intended
to help boost the level of Lake Mead… The federal Bureau of
Reclamation released projections Friday showing that Lake Mead,
the nation’s largest reservoir, will be at levels next year
that continue to trigger moderate cutbacks in the two U.S.
states and Mexico.
A new report by the Pacific Institute suggests Californians
have learned to conserve so well that water forecasters need to
rethink their approach to estimating future water demand.
Water-efficient succulents and nitrogen-fixing tree legumes may
take five to 12 years to produce their first nutritional
harvests. Nevertheless, they can produce more edible biomass
over a decade with far less water than that used by
conventional annual crops, while sequestering carbon into the
soil to mitigate climate change…
Although only five of 41 groundwater sustainability plans
submitted to the Department of Water Resources for review in
January mention the human right to water, and only one of those
affirmed it as a consideration in their plan, these two
policies are closely related.
Failure to account for the long-term trend of declining per
capita water demand has led to routine overestimation of future
water demand. This can lead to unnecessary and costly
investment in unneeded infrastructure and new sources of
supply, higher costs, and adverse environmental impacts.
The study, conducted by the University of California, Berkeley,
examined 306,718 acres of California Rangeland Trust’s
conservation easements across the state to explore both the
environmental and monetary value of preserving California’s
open spaces.
Now that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has released a
final California Water Resilience Portfolio, farm organizations
say they will monitor progress on implementing the plan’s
proposals—and on resolution of ongoing state-federal conflicts
that complicate achieving some of its goals.
The grim report by the Water Foundation, a charitable
organization based in California that is focused on clean,
reliable water for people and nature, predicts the groundwater
sustainability plans written by the various districts in the
San Joaquin Valley will not achieve what SGMA purports to do –
that is, sustainably manage groundwater resources.
Editors Note: The Water Foundation is not affiliated
with the Water Education Foundation.
According to a release issued by the Nature Conservancy, the
program provides an opportunity for growers to receive
financial compensation for recharging groundwater during the
course of normal farming operations on a variety of crops while
also providing critical wetland habitat for waterbirds
migrating along the Pacific Flyway.
Senators met yesterday to consider a suite of legislation to
address water problems in the American West, though little was
revealed about what comes next for the bills.
Ceres Imaging, an Oakland-based startup company, is one of
several high-tech aerial monitoring companies helping
California farmers, including those in Kern County, increase
their production, while decreasing their demand for water. It
is a logical marriage between agriculture and innovators in
California’s Silicon Valley.
On a hot June evening, UC Merced Professor Josh Viers joined
farm advocate and small farmer Tom Willey on his front porch
near Fresno to talk about California’s water, disadvantaged
communities, agricultural production and the future as part of
the new “Down on the Farm” podcast that’s now available for all
to hear.
Tapan Pathak, University of California Cooperative Extension
specialist based at UC Merced, is doing applied research that
farmers and ranchers can use to adapt to new conditions created
by a variable and changing climate. “You don’t have to shift
your practice tomorrow, but if you are thinking of making a
30-year investment, it’s important to know what risks there are
for planting different crops,” said Pathak…
At the Groundwater Resources Association Third Annual
Groundwater Sustainability Agency Summit held online in June, a
panel of managers from four of the critically overdrafted
basins reflected on the hard work of developing and adopting a
groundwater sustainability plan.
A recent analysis published in Nature found cattle to be one of
the major drivers of water shortages. Notably, it is because of
water used to grow crops that are fed to cows such as alfalfa
and hay. Across the US, cattle-feed crops, which end up as beef
and dairy products, account for 23% of all water consumption,
according to the report. In the Colorado River Basin, it is
over half.
With the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act closing in on
growers throughout California, there are many questions. One
big one: should growers go ahead and put a meter on their
pumps?
For more than a decade, California’s governors have pushed for
“voluntary agreements” to establish rules for water diversions
by major urban and agricultural water districts, and to redress
their environmental impacts. Voluntary agreements crumbled
recently, after the state’s largest water districts walked away
from the table.
After several years of experimentation, scientists have
engineered thale cress, or Arabidopsis thaliana, to
behave like a succulent, improving water-use efficiency,
salinity tolerance and reducing the effects of drought. The
tissue succulence engineering method devised for this small
flowering plant can be used in other plants to improve drought
and salinity tolerance with the goal of moving this approach
into food and bioenergy crops.
As the Salton Sea retreats, leaving the dry playa exposed, dust
particles become airborne and mobilize lung-damaging toxins
from agricultural runoff. Red Hill Bay, located near the
southeastern corner of the sea, would restore habitat by
flooding the area, but it’s one of several mitigation projects
that have taken flack for progressing so slowly.
A recent paper on climate change in California and the West has
been in the news and raising concerns. Based on extensive
analysis of tree ring data—a good measure of summer soil
moisture—the authors postulate that most of the region is in an
unfolding “megadrought” that began in 2000 and is the second
worst in the past 1,200 years. … If the state is in a
megadrought, it means a great deal. We should plan accordingly.
California’s groundwater – a critical resource in times of
drought – is disappearing faster than we’re replenishing it.
Our underground savings accounts are tapped, and we face a host
of challenges like land subsidence, storage capacity loss and,
most importantly, a dwindling water supply for California’s dry
times.
Standard tillage practices have been used throughout the San
Joaquin Valley for nearly 90 years. Using similar inputs and
amounts and pest management, UC Cooperative Extension cropping
systems specialist Jeff Mitchell’s team showed that a garbanzo
and sorghum rotation in no-till yielded at least as well as in
standard tillage. Sorghum yields were similar in no-till and
standard tillage systems while garbanzo yields matched or
exceeded no-till…
States have grappled in the last two decades with declining
water levels in the basin’s main reservoirs — Mead and Powell —
while reckoning with clear scientific evidence that climate
change is already constricting the iconic river… For water
managers, the steady drop in water consumption in recent years
is a signal that conservation efforts are working and that they
are not helpless in the face of daunting environmental changes.
The passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act
(SGMA) in 2014, granted the state official oversight authority
of groundwater. … A new paper published in Society and
Natural Resources, examines how the state’s ongoing involvement
helped shape current policies by looking at the 120-year
history of California’s role in groundwater management…
The Natural Resources Conservation Service is working with
American Farmland Trust to help enhance San Joaquin Valley
water efficiency. The San Joaquin Valley Land and Water
Conservation Collaboration is being made possible through the
Regional Conservation Partnership Program from NRCS, in
coordination with state and local partners.
This practice entails on-site grinding of whole, removed trees
and the incorporation of the wood chips back into the almond
fields before the next replanting. … In terms of soil health,
the [University of California] researchers found a 58% increase
in soil carbon as well as a 32% increase in water holding
capacity compared to conventional burning practices. Overall
productivity of the trees increased by 20% as well.
The gravity-fed Friant-Kern Canal that is key to survival for
15,000 east side San Joaquin Valley farms continues to be
impacted by subsidence. Land near Porterville appears to be
most worrisome where the land has sunk so much due to adjacent
water pumping that the canal has lost 60% of its capacity. As
of July 2018, it was estimated the canal is approximately 12
feet below the original constructed elevation.
The governor’s administration in January pitched ambitious
proposals to help fund implementation of the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) and cushion its impacts on
farmers and local communities. In the May Revision of the
budget, however, all but one funding allocation from an earlier
proposition have been withdrawn.
The gene-editing technology CRISPR has been used for a variety
of agricultural and public health purposes — from growing
disease-resistant crops to, more recently, a diagnostic test
for the virus that causes COVID-19. Now a study involving fish
that look nearly identical to the endangered Delta smelt finds
that CRISPR can be a conservation and resource management tool,
as well.
The interest is based on the versatility of hemp, which can be
made into different products — biodiesel, fiber, textiles,
clothing, food and nutritional supplements. It’s also because
cotton is no longer grown in the Imperial Valley, and hemp
could be a potential replacement crop that consumes a lot less
water than cotton.
With droughts inevitable, more farmers are switching from
almonds to pistachios, but not everyone is happy about
it. Around the Central Valley, as far north as Colusa but
mostly south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, pistachio
production is rapidly accelerating.
My colleagues and I worked with Assemblymember Rudy Salas
(D-Bakersfield), to craft AB 2642, which will create the
Multibenefit Land Conversion Incentive Program… This new
program will provide incentive payments to farmers and
landowners who voluntarily repurpose their agricultural land to
other less water-intensive uses for a minimum of 10 years.
Where, when, how much and how fast water can best be recharged
into the Central Valley’s severely depleted aquifers has become
a critical question. A new tool aims to help answer those
questions at the field-by-field level or up to an entire
county.
Dr. Aliashgar ‘Ali’ Montazar, a University of California,
Riverside researcher, heads up irrigation and water management
in Imperial and Riverside counties for the University of
California Cooperative Extension system. … He’s kicking the
tires for growers so they can decide if drip is the way to go
even in crops that traditionally haven’t had drip. And he’s
finding it has benefits beyond conserving water.
There is a better, more equitable pathway for reducing the
deficit without forcing arbitrary cuts. It involves 3 million
acres of irrigated agriculture, mostly alfalfa and forage
crops, which consume more than 80% of total water use in the
basin. By retiring less than 10% of this irrigated acreage from
production, we could eliminate the existing million acre-foot
overdraft on the Colorado River..
A strange thing happens during particularly wet winters in
California: farmers flood their fields. … Aquifers are the
last line of defense against drought conditions. By flooding
their fields in January, farmers hope to fill these underground
reservoirs with water they can use in August. If a trio of
recent studies prove accurate, one can expect to see this
method deployed more regularly.
In mid-April of 2020, Restore the Delta hosted a webinar where
they discussed the history of water planning and the voluntary
agreements, including their numerous concerns. … Before
addressing the main topic of the webinar, Executive Director
Barbara Barrigan-Parilla noted that there are many in the Delta
who aren’t on the webinar due to lack of reliable internet
service in rural communities, affordability issues, and/or lack
of access to devices.
Fairness – or at least the perception of fairness – could play
a determining role in the future of California’s groundwater,
according to new research. The study, published in Society and
Natural Resources, evaluated 137 surveys of Yolo County farmers
to gauge their perceptions of fairness for groundwater
allocation strategies and dispute resolution options.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved $10 million to
help pay for water projects in the farmlands of central
Arizona, where growers are bracing for their supply of Colorado
River water to be shut off. But those funds, conditionally
awarded this month by the Natural Resources Conservation
Service, are still subject to negotiations between federal and
state officials.
The Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency has been working
toward sustainable management of the Pajaro Valley’s water
resources. At the 2019 Western Groundwater Congress, General
Manager Brian Lockwood discussed the projects and programs the
Agency is implementing as they work towards achieving
groundwater sustainability.
Samantha Ying and Michael Schaefer, both from the Department of
Environmental Sciences at University of California (UC)
Riverside, are part of a team set on untangling the mystery of
a practice upon which farmers have relied for centuries to
reduce water use—cover crops.
Under the drought contingency plan hammered out by Colorado
River Basin states last year, Arizona agreed to voluntarily
reduce its water use by 192,000 acre-feet, or about 7%, leaving
that water in Lake Mead to help reduce the likelihood of
greater cutbacks down the road. Tom Buschatzke, director of the
Arizona Department of Water Resources, says data from a new
Bureau of Reclamation report show that plan is working.
Yolo Basin Foundation’s Board of Directors announced this week
that Chelsea Martinez has been named the Foundation’s new
executive director. … Martinez joined the Foundation in 2017
as the Community Outreach & Volunteer Coordinator and has grown
and sustained the Foundation’s volunteer base to over 200
volunteers as well as helped to increase community involvement
in its programs.
Voluntary agreements in California have been touted as an
innovative and flexible way to improve environmental conditions
in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the rivers that feed
it. … Yet, no one said it would be easy getting interest
groups with sometimes sharply different views – and some, such
as farmers, with livelihoods heavily dependent on water — to
reach consensus on how to address the water quality and habitat
needs of the Delta watershed.
Kristin Sicke is Assistant General Manager for Yolo County
Flood Control and Water Conservation District, which manages
water supplies for 200,000 acres in western Yolo County, which
encompasses Woodland, Davis, and the surrounding area. In this
presentation from the 2019 Western Groundwater Congress, Ms.
Sicke describes the district’s efforts to use winter stormwater
flows for groundwater recharge in the Yolo subbasin.
Eric Averett is General Manager with the Rosedale-Rio Bravo
Water Storage District, which is one of several water districts
within Kern County. … In this presentation from the Western
Groundwater Congress, Mr. Averett discusses how his district
and Kern County have been grappling with how to establish
groundwater pumping allocations.
Against the terrible news of a national emergency, it’s perhaps
difficult to focus on our water situation. Recall that January
and February were bone-dry; March and April bore us a couple of
storms, but it was too little, too late. It was a very dry
winter, overall. … That puts us in the position of another
“do or die” year for precipitation next winter, an altogether
familiar proposition in California. We all know: It rains a
bunch all at once in some years, and then we go dry for a
number of years after that.
Registered voters who live in Mendocino have the opportunity
and responsibility to decide the direction of groundwater
management in Mendocino at two upcoming Mendocino City
Community Services District Public Hearings scheduled for April
16 and 27.
In January, water users in 21 critically overdrafted basins
delivered groundwater sustainability plans to the state
Department of Water Resources. In this series, we examine
the 36 plans submitted for 11 critically overdrafted basins in
the San Joaquin Valley—California’s largest farming region. …
This post examines how the plans propose to end overdraft.
Winter-flooded rice fields already provide essential habitat
for migratory birds, but could they also provide benefits to
help the state’s salmon populations? Scientists at the
University of California, Davis, are finalizing their fieldwork
on an experiment to find out what management practices farmers
might adopt in their fields to maximize fish survival.
Evapotranspiration data has historically been limited in scope
and expensive to access. A new project seeks to change that.
Researchers from NASA, the Desert Research Institute and the
Environmental Defense Fund, with support from Google Earth
Engine technology, are working to create an online platform
with free, accessible, satellite-based water data open to
anyone.
“Water management is one of the most important farming
practices you or your clients should be practicing, full stop,”
wrote Phoebe Gordon, UC Cooperative Extension orchard systems
advisor in Madera and Merced counties. Born and raised in
California, Gordon is excited to share her knowledge with
growers to improve orchard production and sustainability in the
San Joaquin Valley and beyond.
The Pajaro Valley enjoys a temperate microclimate, in part
because it is situated at the hip of Monterey Bay. … But the
Pajaro Valley is different from the rest of the big ag regions
in California. The loamy soil isn’t irrigated with massive
surface water infrastructure like in the Central Valley.
David Orth is the principal of New Current Water and Land,
which offers strategic planning, program implementation, and
water resource development services. At the California
Irrigation Institute’s 2020 Annual Conference, he gave his
observations having watched Groundwater Sustainability Agencies
(GSAs) form and develop their Groundwater Sustainability Plans
(GSPs) since the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA) in 2014.
When county Board of Supervisor member Peggy Judd asked former
Gov. Bruce Babbitt to share his thoughts on rural counties
taking on responsibilities relating to groundwater management,
he responded, “I couldn’t say no.”
Researchers with the University of Nevada, Reno, have been
working to evaluate and commercialize crops that use less
water. Professor John Cushman and his team think they’ve found
an alternative. It’s called teff.
Likely just in time for the real thing, a “Mock Frost” event
was held this week to test the capacity of the city of Ukiah’s
recycled Water System, also called the Purple Pipe. … “It
went well,” Ukiah grape grower David Koball said of the test.
“There was lots of water pressure and we had no issues.”
Recharge basins are becoming increasingly popular in
overdrafted regions in California, where water managers are
seeking solutions to balance groundwater supply and demand to
comply with the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act
(SGMA).
Stanford researchers have developed a machine learning model
that detects unexpected water-use consumption patterns – data
water utilities can use to inform resource planning and water
conservation campaigns.
Groundwater sustainability plans that have been submitted to
the state are now online at the DWR SGMA Portal. Plans are open
to public comment for 75 days after they were posted online.
Below is a table of the submitted plans, the counties they
cover and details about the public comment period for that
plan.
The Colusa Groundwater Authority, the California Department of
Water Resources and The Nature Conservancy have partnered to
conduct an on-farm, multi-benefit demonstration program for
growers in two select project locations around Colusa County.
David joins me today to discuss the water economy and where we
are right now as a civilization. He shares why we should be in
a global state of panic and why we’re no longer in a world
where water is sustainable. He explains the need for water to
be priced and how it can positively affect the ag industry.
David also discusses water rights, “free water,” the water
market, and possible solutions to water scarcity.
In the coming weeks and months, the Newsom administration,
water users and conservation groups will continue to refine a
framework for potential voluntary agreements intended to
benefit salmon and other fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin
Delta.
First things first: you’d be wise to forget everything you’ve
read or heard recently about “voluntary agreements,” which
according to the usual suspects, will bring a just and peaceful
end the seemingly never-ending battle over California water.
Not true. Not even close.
The San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors
visited the Imperial Valley January 30 for a day-long tour that
highlighted areas critical to the agency’s Regional Conveyance
System Study.
Time and time again seemingly well-intentioned initiatives and
repeated attempts to develop a comprehensive water management
solution have failed, despite cautionary tales. However, 2019
witnessed the horizon of a new initiative called the Voluntary
Agreements that could do what few, if any, past plans, efforts,
or reports could do – unite water management and develop
collaboration.
If President Trump wants to understand the risk of rolling back
water efficiency standards that have been in place for almost
30 years, he can turn to a member of his own Cabinet.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has signed off on
regulations that treat water-efficient toilets and shower heads
as effective tools to save Americans from droughts and other
risks.
A joint workshop hosted by the Department of Water Resources
and the State Water Board provides details on how incoming
plans will be evaluated and what State Water Board intervention
might look like.
We are on the brink of a historic accomplishment in California
water to resolve longstanding conflicts through comprehensive
voluntary agreements that substitute collaboration and creative
solutions for perpetual litigation. For anyone to abandon this
transformative effort in favor of litigation would be a tragic
mistake…
Farmers, large and small, are beginning to grapple with what
the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act means for them. One
by one, local sustainability plans are starting to go public.
Many farmers expect to see cutbacks on pumping once the program
is fully implemented in 2040.
Now the hard work begins which includes determining just how
much water growers can pump out of the ground. A big factor in
deciding how much groundwater can be pump will be mitigating
the decreased level of water in the Friant-Kern Canal, another
major topic addressed at Friday’s meeting.
Gov. Doug Ducey is touting Arizona’s record on water while also
acknowledging the state has “more to do” in some areas. Ducey
talked about water policies this week in an interview for The
Arizona Republic’s podcast The Gaggle.
The landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA,
requires some of the state’s thirstiest areas form local
“Groundwater Sustainability Agencies” and submit long-term
plans by Jan. 31 for keeping aquifers healthy. Together, those
plans will add up to a big reveal, as groundwater managers
finally disclose how badly they believe their aquifers are
overdrawn…
Mediterranean climates include California, and dry-farming of
cannabis is catching on in the Emerald Triangle as a part of
the general trend toward sun-grown and organic product.
Innovative efforts to accelerate
restoration of headwater forests and to improve a river for the
benefit of both farmers and fish. Hard-earned lessons for water
agencies from a string of devastating California wildfires.
Efforts to drought-proof a chronically water-short region of
California. And a broad debate surrounding how best to address
persistent challenges facing the Colorado River.
These were among the issues Western Water explored in
2019, and are still worth taking a look at in case you missed
them.
State legislators plan to tackle widespread problems of
groundwater overpumping in rural Arizona this session,
proposing bills that would make it easier to limit
well-drilling in farming areas where residents have asked for
help from the state to safeguard their dwindling water
supplies.
After years of planning, discussion and debate, the Indian
Wells Valley Groundwater Authority board will vote on the
adoption of the groundwater sustainability plan at its meeting
Thursday. … The plan will provide a roadmap to bring the IWV
groundwater basin into sustainability by 2040. That includes
reducing pumping of the basin to a safe yield of 7,650
acre-feet per year…
The first question asked at the Eastern Tule Groundwater
Sustainability Agency Board meeting on Friday represented the
frustration of growers who are still facing the unknown. “It’s
2020,” the grower said, who went on to ask the board, referring
to growers, “what can they pump?” The board is still working
through the process on how much water growers can pump out of
the ground.
West Marin ranchers and a local conservation group are teaming
up to plan habitat restoration projects along Walker Creek to
restore the once bountiful, but now diminished, runs of coho
salmon and steelhead trout. The California Department of Fish
and Wildlife awarded the Point Reyes Station-based Marin
Resource Conservation District a nearly $350,000 grant this
month…
Plenty of work is on the docket for 2020 and beyond to manage
and preserve Arizona’s water supply, even if that work might
not write history the way last year’s signing of the Drought
Contingency Plan did. … The state’s water managers are known
for prioritizing predictability and making careful, gradual
changes, not erratic or sudden ones. Here are five key
issues to watch this year in Arizona water.
The courtroom battle over 9,000-acre Staten Island is the
latest conflict in the Delta over farming, wetlands and aging
levees that, besides preventing flooding, preserve a way of
life on the man-made islands. The suit, filed in 2018 by a
group called Wetlands Preservation Foundation, accuses the
California Department of Water Resources and the Nature
Conservancy of failing to adequately protect wildlife or employ
sustainable agricultural practices on the property…The stakes
are high because the channels, islands and marshes that make up
the Delta are a catch basin for most of California’s drinking
water.
Republican and Democratic Leaders of the Arizona House are
again eyeing the state’s water supply as a major issue in the
coming legislative session. GOP House Speaker Rusty Bowers and
Democratic Minority Leader Charlene Fernandez have both
highlighted overpumping in the state’s rural areas as a major
issue for lawmakers when return to work on Monday.
Californian almonds will benefit from a new public campaign
next week to capitalise on the explosion in plant-based
eating… However, the environmental reputation of the almond
sector is much less favourable. It was once labelled a
“horticultural vampire” by US magazine New Republic for its
perceived role in California’s most recent droughts.
As groundwater sustainability agencies prepare their plans to
meet the requirements of the Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act (SGMA), they will likely utilize a variety of tools to
achieve sustainability. … At ACWA’s fall conference, a panel
discussed the legal framework, different types of groundwater
rights, lessons learned from existing groundwater production
allocation programs, and potential pitfalls …
Farm organizations welcomed a new water planning document from
state agencies while they analyzed the document’s proposed
strategies. Titled the California Water Resilience Portfolio
and released last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration
described the document as an effort to guide water management
in a way that works for people, the environment and the
economy.
Along with long-term drought and climate change, the
overcommitment of the Colorado River is a big reason why Lake
Mead has dropped to historic levels in recent years. Fixing it
could be a big problem for Arizona.
Consistent with the science developed over the last three
decades, the Newsom administration is pursuing comprehensive,
watershed-wide solutions that address the numerous factors that
limit the abundance of native fish in the Delta. These types of
solutions are the ones that are most likely to achieve the
state’s co-equal goals of the 2009 Delta Reform Act…
The Fresno County Board of Supervisors adopted a plan on
Tuesday meant to maintain groundwater and keep users from
pumping too much from underground basins. … Officials said
the plan also lays out efforts to try to recharge groundwater —
in other words, replace water sucked out from underground.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget for the upcoming
fiscal year will include an additional $220 million for the
Salton Sea Management Program, a 10-year plan to reduce the
environmental and public health hazards plaguing the
communities that surround the fast-drying body of water.
These changes will be substantial, multi-faceted, and often
rapid. Some changes will be irreversible. Many changes are
inevitable. Some will say today’s Delta is doomed. It will be
important for California to develop a scientific program that
can help guide difficult policy and management discussions and
decision-making through these challenges.
Governor Newsom’s administration recently released a draft
Water Resilience Portfolio plan… This plan also emphasizes
diverse relatively precise policy initiatives for state
agencies, often in support of local and regional water
problem-solving and with some aspirations to bring state
agencies together. It is a good read, clearly reflecting
intense and diverse discussions over several months.
In the shadow of Mount Shasta lies the Butte Creek Ranch, its
alpine meadows carpeted in grass sprinkled with wildflowers and
bordered by forest. … For over 160 years, this summer scene
has played out for six generations of the Hart family. …
Recently, the Harts guaranteed the continuation of this legacy
by working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a
plan that balances their land use with conserving the rich
natural resources of Butte Creek.
California water policy leaders say balancing the supply of
groundwater by implementing the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act, or SGMA, and addressing policies related to
water supply and water quality, will continue to be priority
issues in 2020.
Farmers for decades have used huge machines to plant, grow and
harvest their crops, but more and more Arizona farmers today
are using tiny, remote-controlled aircraft to boost yields and
save water and money.
The idea is to make this sort of wildlife friendly farm
replicable elsewhere in the Delta. As part of that vision, the
Nature Conservancy has a program called BirdReturns, in which
staff identify farmland that would ideally be flooded for
migratory birds. The group then “rents” that land from farmers
for the duration of the birds’ stay, making it profitable for
farmers even when it’s fallow.
In theory, a demand management program would pay users to
conserve in the midst of a crisis in order to boost the river’s
big reservoirs. How it would work, who would participate and
how it would be funded are still unanswered questions. Another
concern is how to make the program equitable — so it doesn’t
burden one user over another.
Federal water managers are about to start reexamining a
12-year-old agreement among Western states that laid down rules
for dealing with potential water shortages along the Colorado
River. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said he asked the
Bureau of Reclamation to start the review at the beginning of
2020, rather than by the end of 2020, which is the deadline
under the existing agreement.
Federal water managers are about to start reexamining a
12-year-old agreement among Western states that laid down rules
for dealing with potential water shortages along the Colorado
River. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said he asked the
Bureau of Reclamation to start the review at the beginning of
2020, rather than by the end of 2020, which is the deadline
under the existing agreement.
Back in the 1990’s, when water rates started to hurt growers,
the Valley Center Municipal Water District helped pioneered a
program that gave ag users a special rate in return for their
water being subject to interruption. … Recently the San Diego
County Water Authority introduced a permanent policy that can
trace its lineage directly to Valley Center’s efforts to
preserve its growers.
States in the U.S. West that have agreed to begin taking less
water next month from the drought-stricken Colorado River got
praise and a push for more action Thursday from the nation’s
top water official. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner
Brenda Burman told federal, state and local water managers that
abiding by the promises they made will be crucial to ensuring
that more painful cuts aren’t required.
Dr. Michael Kiparsky is the founding director of the Wheeler
Water Institute within the Center for Law, Energy, and
Environment at the UC Berkeley School of Law. In this
presentation from the 2019 Western Groundwater Congress, Dr.
Kiparsky discussed a pilot project in the Pajaro Valley
designed to incentivize private landowners to do groundwater
recharge.
A year later, issues triggered by a contentious plan by state
water regulators to increase unimpaired river flows for the
benefit of fish remain firmly mired in red tape.
Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will start taking less water from
the Colorado River in January as a hard-fought set of
agreements kicks in to reduce the risk of reservoirs falling to
critically low levels. The two U.S. states agreed to leave a
portion of their water allotments in Lake Mead under a deal
with California called the Lower Basin Drought Contingency
Plan, or DCP…
There are two things already baked into the desert’s cake
guaranteed to inject a bit of what ails the rest of the state —
the full flowering of the regulatory scheme mandated by the
state’s 2014 Groundwater Sustainability Act and reductions in
Colorado River allocations made necessary by a drying Colorado
River Basin that is already badly over allocated.
Farmers are worried… Some feel angry, even betrayed by
lawmakers and the environmental groups that have pressured them
into what they see as ever-tightening regulations on the ag
industry. While many disagree with SGMA, most do acknowledge
that California’s unrestricted groundwater use has been
unsustainable.
The 20-year groundwater plan, required by state law, aims to
bring the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin back into balance.
Between 1981 and 2011, the 684-square-mile aquifer serving 29
percent of San Luis Obispo County residents and 40 percent of
its agriculture lost 369,000 acre-feet of water.
I assumed the different local water agencies were in regular
contact with their customers about important issues like
groundwater and that they would be happy to take advantage of
the opportunity to educate the public about what was happening
with SGMA. I learned that that was not the case. This is not a
subject that engages people who don’t already have some reason
to be concerned about it.
In my current research, I have been studying the implementation
of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, commonly known
as SGMA, in California. SGMA is one of the world’s
largest-scale policy experiments on collective action to manage
natural resources. At the same time, pervasively disparate
access to water resources in the Central Valley made SGMA the
perfect case study to test some of the power asymmetry theories
I have been working on with my colleagues.
Aside from advanced economies and Mediterranean climates that
sustain long growing seasons, California, Spain and Australia
share an intermittent feature that reshapes their overburdened
water systems every time it rears its ugly head: drought.
The Santa Fe Irrigation District is moving forward with a
proposed three-year rate plan that would raise total revenue
for the district by 3 percent per year over the next three
years, beginning early next year, through rate increases and
changes in the district’s rate structure.
California has told Napa County to form a local groundwater
agency to ensure the underground reservoir that nurtures
world-famous wine country is being kept in good shape. The
county submitted more than 1,000 pages of documents to try to
avoid that outcome.
The study demonstrated the following: big legislative reforms
in water management in these three areas have always come about
as a consequence of important droughts. … One of the main
differences lies in how water ownership is managed and how the
market is regulated in this field.
Sarah Heard is Director of Conservation Economics & Finance
with the California chapter of The Nature Conservancy… At the
Groundwater Resources Association’s Western Groundwater
Congress, Ms. Heard gave this presentation on the Fox Canyon
Groundwater Market in Ventura County, the first groundwater
market since the passage of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act.
Lawmakers should balance environmental concerns with concerns
for public welfare and economics, rather than completely
disregard either issue. Creative legislation allows for more
comprehensive solutions to problems.
The water coalition has been meeting since 2018 and started
under the facilitation of Alan Mikkelsen, senior adviser to
Secretary of the Interior on water and western resources. …
The coalition aims to address challenges to fisheries, water
supply, and waterfowl and forest health.
When the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority technical
and policy advisory committees reviewed a draft sustainability
plan, it left many with questions and criticisms. The plan may
also leave uncertainty for the valley’s agricultural industry.
They face the brunt of the plan’s water sustainability
requirements when the plan is implemented…
Groundwater in Tulare County, especially in Porterville, has
been a hot topic of discussion for quite sometime. As
groundwater levels have begun to subside, a viable and woking
plan to maintain the groundwater has been state mandated, and
the implementation of this plan is set to be put in action by
January 31, 2020. But what exactly is the plan, and who is at
stake?
City Council members – sitting as the directors of the
Vacaville Groundwater Sustainability Agency – approved a
collaboration agreement Tuesday with the other sustainability
agencies in the Solano Subbasin in order to keep the
groundwater grant funding flowing.
Declining flows could force Southwest water managers to
confront long-standing legal uncertainties, and threaten the
water security of Upper Basin states of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah
and New Mexico.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources is working on
revising a model based on outdated assumptions and incomplete
data that have perpetuated the myth that Pinal County is facing
a water shortage. In fact, Pinal County has plenty of water for
today, tomorrow and 100 years from now.
The district’s decades-long election drought occurred as a
result of an insufficient number of candidates to require
elections. … Changes in the district’s operations led to a
greater number of candidates for the recent election. The
district’s biggest issue is implementing the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act …
The streamlined permitting process is an important component of
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act implementation, as it
may assist Groundwater Sustainability Agencies in more
efficiently obtaining the necessary water rights to divert and
recharge water during high flow events.
Arizona’s portion of the Drought Contingency Plan became a
unique example in the basin of tribal leaders asserting
themselves in broader discussions about the river’s management.
… With the drought plan done, some tribal leaders say their
water rights can’t be ignored any longer.
With roughly two and a half months remaining before a
state-mandated deadline, local agencies overseeing critically
overdrafted groundwater basins are working to finalize
sustainability plans as required by a 2014 state law.
Hydropower facilities store water in reservoirs in order to
release it in a constant flow and produce energy consistently.
If wind turbines and solar panels, paired with battery storage,
took the pressure off of these facilities to fill the needs of
the grid during a drought, more of that water could be released
downstream for agricultural use, preventing further groundwater
depletion.
With drought becoming a more frequent and lasting longer,
scientists have really been booking it to try to find potential
solutions for crops. … A new possibility comes from
researchers at the University of California, Riverside, in the
form of a chemical that triggers plants to stop growing—and
start storing water.
The county of San Luis Obispo announced plans to map the Paso
Robles Groundwater Basin. … People who live in Creston,
Shandon, and Whitely Gardens may see a low flying helicopter
towing a large hexagonal frame when work begins.
Babbitt spoke at a conference of county supervisors from across
Arizona Tuesday, calling for new legislation that would give
county officials the authority to manage groundwater. He said
while the 1980 law has had “a lot of success” in managing
groundwater in urban areas from Phoenix to Tucson, its main
flaw has been leaving groundwater pumping unregulated in rural
parts of the state.
EDF created an online story map … to provide a more holistic
view of groundwater supplies and challenges in the seven-state
Colorado River Basin (Arizona, California, Colorado, New
Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming), drawing from recent
research. Here are four key highlights from the story map that
demonstrate the importance of groundwater and the challenges of
groundwater management in the arid West:
Nationwide, more than a dozen utilities have started developing
renewable natural gas production through partnerships with
farmers, wastewater treatment plants and landfill operators,
while nine have proposed price premiums for customers who
choose it as a fuel, according to the American Gas Association.
The East Tule Groundwater Sustainability Water Agency is racing
the clock when it comes to meeting the state’s requirements by
next year but the message is this: Those who use groundwater
will have to prepare for the possibility of pumping 10 percent
less than they have in the past, beginning as soon as next
year.
The California State Board of Food and Agriculture called out
San Luis Obispo County in a letter expressing concern about
irrigated agriculture’s “limited” involvement in crafting
groundwater plans over the Paso Robles basin.
To survive the next drought and meet the looming demands of the
state’s groundwater sustainability law, California is going to
have to put more water back in the ground. But as other Western
states have found, recharging overpumped aquifers is no easy
task.
Jim Brobeck, water policy analyst for AquAlliance, said the
Agricultural Groundwater Users of Butte County may not have the
public’s best interests in mind. The priority of farmers,
Brobeck said, is to make sure they have water in their wells,
not to protect the shallowest portion of an aquifer. Water
purveyors, he said, like to “exercise” aquifers and may well do
so to the point where the public suffers.
Growing berries can be a water intensive proposition, with the
added challenge that prime growing regions are often located in
areas of high water stress: Eighty percent of Driscoll’s
acreage globally can be found in California and Mexico, regions
which coincide with significant water risks to businesses and
the communities in which they operate.
Dennis Hutson worries small farmers may not have the resources
to adapt to the potentially strict water allocations and
cutbacks that might be coming. Their livelihoods and identities
may be at stake. “You grow things a certain way, and then all
of a sudden you don’t have access to as much water as you would
like in order to grow what you grow,” he says, “and now you’re
kind of out of sorts.”
Groundwater management plans have been released for public
review by both the Salinas Valley and City of Marina
groundwater sustainability agencies … with no agreement
between the two agencies in place and California American
Water’s desalination project at the center of a dispute.
The Alameda County Water District is considering shelling out
$72 million for a fourth-generation, 50,500-acre cattle ranch —
touted as the largest potential land sale in the state — to
preserve water quality, officials say. … The N3 Cattle Co.
ranch is roughly the size of Fremont. It’s located east of
Fremont, Milpitas and San Jose, south of Livermore, and
stretches into parts of Alameda, Santa Clara, San Joaquin and
Stanislaus counties.
Kings County’s groundwater management will begin a 20-year
transformation in 2020. Five local groundwater agencies
presented more information behind the groundwater
sustainability plan in a public outreach meeting Thursday
night.
To survive the next drought and meet the looming demands of the
state’s groundwater sustainability law, California is going to
have to put more water back in the ground. But as other Western
states have found, recharging overpumped aquifers is no easy
task.
While cities on the Monterey Peninsula have been working to
address housing needs and the business community is actively
looking to create more jobs, there is one component they all
need to complete their plans – reliable, drought-proof access
to water.
Building the capacity to resolve disputes and work together is
critical for a sustainable water future. However, recent
analysis conducted by Water in the West … suggests that
alternative dispute resolution processes are rarely used even
when included in water management agreements.
Katie Fyhrie, a grower at Cloverleaf Farm in Davis, Calif.,
worries that the farm won’t be able to keep producing stone
fruits—which depend on the timing and duration of winter
chill—in the long-term. … With that in mind, Fyhrie and her
team have started growing elderberries.
As a berry farmer in Coastal California my entire life, I have
been a vocal supporter of groundwater regulation. … We are
now seeing the profound risk of losing this critical resource,
unless we collectively act soon to preserve groundwater
resources for both the next decade and future generations.
We now have an opportunity to build on the successful Arizona
process that led to the DCP signing. Arizona is stronger
together. And that will serve us well as we work toward the
next step – maintaining a stable, healthy Colorado River system
as we face a hotter and drier future.
California isn’t in an official drought and under mandatory
water conservation, but climate change means that saving water
is always crucial. That’s why a recent announcement should not
go unnoticed: The Sacramento Regional County Sanitation
District won state approval to deliver recycled water to
agricultural and habitat conservation land in the southern part
of the county.
California’s most recent drought lasted many long, parched
years… There was plenty of suffering to go around, but some
vineyards fared less terribly than others—historic parcels east
of San Francisco, in Contra Costa County, for example. Planted
at the turn of the last century by Italian, Portuguese, and
Spanish immigrants, they rely on a technique called dry farming
rather than irrigation.
When you look at a farm, do you think about nutrient rich soils
or cover crops growing between rows? When you look at a marsh,
do you see the submerged layers of sediment created by years of
plant litter piling up? Probably not. But those parts of
well-managed agricultural lands and wetlands store a lot of
carbon, and that’s increasingly important as climate change is
forcing society to consider ways to lower carbon emissions…
Over the last five years, more than 250 groundwater
sustainability agencies have formed to manage groundwater at
the local level and dozens of groundwater sustainability plans
are in progress. … So what do we still need to make the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act a success?
On the Changala family farm in Tulare County, the past and
future are separated by a dirt road and a barbed-wire fence. On
the south side sits a wheat field. On the north, a solar farm,
built three years ago, sending electricity to thousands of
Southern Californians. Alan Changala sees little difference
between the two.
The Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority rolled out
concepts for an administrative structure that could eventually
cement the new agency as an independent entity — should money
ever be found to fund them.
