An aquifer is a geologic formation that stores, transmits, and
yields significant quantities of water to wells or springs.
Aquifers come in two types. Some are formed in the space between
porous materials such as sand, gravel, silt or clay and are known
as alluvial aquifers or unconfined aquifers. However, in many
places in California, there are aquifers beneath a rock layer
that does not allow water to permeate in measurable amounts.
These are known as confined aquifers.
Confined aquifers under pressure are known as artesian aquifers.
This pressure can push water to the surface, which when drilled
are called artesian wells.
During a winter of blizzards, floods and drought-ending
downpours, it’s easy to forget that California suffers
from chronic water scarcity — the long-term decline
of the state’s total available fresh water. This rainy season’s
inundation isn’t going to change that. … It’s all about
groundwater. It is the long-term disappearance of
groundwater that is the major driver behind the state’s steady
decline in total available fresh water, which hydrologists
define as snowpack, surface water, soil moisture and
groundwater combined. … The gains made during wet years
simply can’t offset the over-pumping during the dry years in
between. In fact, the state’s groundwater deficit is now so
large that it will never be fully replenished. -Written by Jay Famiglietti, a global futures
professor at Arizona State University.
The State Water Resources Control Board has approved a request
by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to divert floodwaters from
the San Joaquin River so they can percolate down to aquifers.
The plan would divert 600,000 acre feet of water — or more than
the 191 billion gallons supplied to the city of Los Angeles
each year. … Newsom also has signed an executive
order temporarily lifting regulations and setting clear
conditions for diverting floodwater without permits to recharge
groundwater storage. Groundwater accounts for as much as
60% of California’s water supply during dry times. The aquifers
usually refill when rain and floodwater percolates through the
soil and into the basins. As California’s drought lingered, the
basins weren’t recharging.
Fresno County’s newest large-scale water storage project is
happening below ground. With California inundated by rain and
snow, state and federal water regulators hatched a plan to help
replenish underground aquifers further depleted by heavy
agriculture pumping during the recent drought. In an agreement
announced last week, more than 600,000 acre-feet of floodwater
from the San Joaquin River system will be diverted and allowed
to soak back into the earth in areas with permeable soils and
wildlife refuges. How much water is 600,000 acre-feet? Enough
to overflow Millerton Lake, which stores 520,000 acre-feet at
capacity. Or enough to meet the annual needs of more than 1
million average households.
Mark Sigety has owned land in the Harquahala Valley near
Tonopah since 2003. Since then, he says several investors have
reached out to buy his half-acre plot along with other parcels
in western Maricopa County. … The Harquahala Groundwater
Basin is one of three in rural Arizona set aside specifically
to import water to the Valley once water gets scarce. It’s
known as an Irrigation Non-Expansion Area, or INA. It’s a
place where the state or political subdivisions that own land
eligible to be irrigated can pump groundwater and transport it
into areas where groundwater is regulated in Arizona, known as
AMAs, or Active Management Areas. The Phoenix AMA is one
of them and covers land from west of Buckeye to Superior.
To capitalize on strong flows resulting from
higher-than-average snowpack, the State Water Resources Control
Board approved a petition by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to
divert over 600,000 acre-feet of San Joaquin River flood waters
for wildlife refuges, underground storage and recharge. With
this approval, the State Water Board has authorized nearly
790,000 acre-feet in diversions for groundwater recharge and
other purposes since late December 2022 – the amount of water
used by at least 1.5 million households in a single year.
In light of last week’s decisions regarding the groundwater
sustainability plans, groundwater managers in Fresno County are
celebrating. The backstory: The California Department of
Water Resources announced its decisions for the groundwater
sustainability plans for 10 basins in the Central Valley,
giving the green light to the Kings Subbasin and Westside
Subbasin, both of which are anchored in Fresno
County. Groundwater sustainability plans are required by
2014’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and govern how
agencies in critically overdrafted areas achieve groundwater
sustainability. The big picture: The basins that received
approval from the state will move forward to the implementation
phase while those that were deemed inadequate will face direct
oversight from the State Water Board.
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) today kicked
off National Groundwater Awareness Week 2023 with an
engaging educational event held at the California Natural
Resources Agency headquarters in Sacramento. The event featured
an array of groundwater partners who
provided presentations describing their work in
groundwater and why groundwater is such an important water
resource in California. After the presentations, the in-person
audience visited educational stations where they engaged with
the day’s speakers and other groundwater professionals.
State water officials on Thursday rejected six local
groundwater plans for the San Joaquin Valley, where basins
providing drinking and irrigation water are severely depleted
from decades of intensive pumping by farms. The plans —
submitted by local agencies tasked with the job of protecting
underground supplies — outline strategies for complying with a
state law requiring sustainable groundwater
management. The Department of Water Resources deemed the
plans inadequate … Groundwater depletion has hurt the San
Joaquin Valley’s small, rural communities, home to many
low-income Latino residents who have been forced to live on
bottled water and drill deeper wells, which can cost tens of
thousands of dollars.
As we approach next week’s National Groundwater Awareness Week,
we have several groundwater-related events, articles and tours
to share with you. Groundwater Awareness Event: Monday,
March 6 Join the California Department of Water
Resources, the Water Education Foundation and others on Monday
at a special event in Sacramento to kick
off next week’s National Groundwater Awareness
Week. The 9 a.m. to noon event will include
presentations, informational stations and demonstrations. For
those who are unable to attend in person at the California
Natural Resources Building’s Main Auditorium, 715
P St., the presentations will be
available to view remotely.
While the lack of groundwater regulation plagues rural Arizona,
there are proposed ways to create a larger supply in the region
without depending on dwindling amounts from the Colorado River
and groundwater. The Colorado River and local groundwater
supplies around 40% of Arizona’s water. Lake Powell in northern
Arizona and southern Utah is at record-low levels, as of Feb.
18. It is the lowest level it has been measured at since its
construction in the 1960s. Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl
Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, called the
Colorado River crisis Arizona’s most imminent water
problem.
It sounds like an obvious fix for California’s whipsawing
cycles of deluge and drought: Capture the water from downpours
so it can be used during dry spells. Pump it out of
flood-engorged rivers and spread it in fields or sandy basins,
where it can seep into the ground and replenish the region’s
huge, badly depleted aquifers. … Yet even this winter, when
the skies delivered bounties of water not seen in half a
decade, large amounts of it surged down rivers and out into the
ocean. Water agencies and experts say California
bureaucracy is increasingly to blame — the state tightly
regulates who gets to take water from streams and creeks to
protect the rights of people downriver, and its rules don’t
adjust nimbly even when storms are delivering a torrent of new
supply.
Winter storms have filled California’s reservoirs and built up
a colossal Sierra snowpack that’s nearly twice its normal size
for this time of year. But years of dry conditions have created
problems far beneath the Earth’s surface that aren’t as easily
addressed. Groundwater — found in underground layers containing
sand, soil and rock — is crucial for drinking water and
sustaining farms. During drought years, 60% of California’s
annual water supply comes from groundwater. … The chart
below shows how water on the surface and underground have
changed over the years in California’s Central Valley — an
agricultural hub that has seen some of the state’s most
pressing issues related to groundwater. Compared with 2004, the
amount of water on and below the ground in 2022 has dropped by
nearly 55 cubic kilometers.
It was exactly the sort of deluge California groundwater
agencies have been counting on to replenish their overworked
aquifers. The start of 2023 brought a parade of torrential
Pacific storms to bone dry California. Snow piled up across the
Sierra Nevada at a near-record pace while runoff from the
foothills gushed into the Central Valley, swelling rivers over
their banks and filling seasonal creeks for the first time in
half a decade. Suddenly, water managers and farmers toiling in
one of the state’s most groundwater-depleted regions had an
opportunity to capture stormwater and bank it underground.
… The barrage of water was in many ways the first real
test of groundwater sustainability agencies’ plans to bring
their basins into balance, as required by California’s landmark
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). The run of
storms revealed an assortment of bright spots and hurdles the
state must overcome to fully take advantage of the bounty
brought by the next big atmospheric river storm.
It was exactly the sort of deluge
California groundwater agencies have been counting on to
replenish their overworked aquifers.
The start of 2023 brought a parade of torrential Pacific storms
to bone dry California. Snow piled up across the Sierra Nevada at
a near-record pace while runoff from the foothills gushed into
the Central Valley, swelling rivers over their banks and filling
seasonal creeks for the first time in half a decade.
Suddenly, water managers and farmers toiling in one of the
state’s most groundwater-depleted regions had an opportunity to
capture stormwater and bank it underground. Enterprising agencies
diverted water from rushing rivers and creeks into manmade
recharge basins or intentionally flooded orchards and farmland.
Others snagged temporary permits from the state to pull from
streams they ordinarily couldn’t touch.
Growing up in the shadow of the
Rocky Mountains, Andrew Schwartz never missed an opportunity to
play in – or study – a Colorado snowstorm. During major
blizzards, he would traipse out into the icy wind and heavy
drifts of snow pretending to be a scientist researching in
Antarctica.
Decades later, still armed with an obsession for extreme weather,
Schwartz has landed in one of the snowiest places in the West,
leading a research lab whose mission is to give California water
managers instant information on the depth and quality of snow
draping the slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
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.
Successfully recharging aquifers could bring multiple benefits
for farms and wildlife and help restore the vital interconnection
between groundwater and rivers or streams. As local areas around
California draft their groundwater sustainability plans, though,
landowners in the hardest hit regions of the state know they will
have to reduce pumping to address the chronic overdraft in which
millions of acre-feet more are withdrawn than are naturally
recharged.
The southern part of California’s Central Coast from San Luis Obispo County to Ventura County, home to about 1.5 million people, is blessed with a pleasing Mediterranean climate and a picturesque terrain. Yet while its unique geography abounds in beauty, the area perpetually struggles with drought.
Indeed, while the rest of California breathed a sigh of relief with the return of wet weather after the severe drought of 2012–2016, places such as Santa Barbara still grappled with dry conditions.
Our event calendar is an excellent
resource for keeping up with water events in California and the
West.
Groundwater is top of mind for many water managers as they
prepare to meet next January’s deadline for submitting
sustainability plans required under California’s Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act. We have several upcoming featured
events listed on our calendar that focus on a variety of relevant
groundwater topics:
Groundwater helped make Kern County
the king of California agricultural production, with a $7 billion
annual array of crops that help feed the nation. That success has
come at a price, however. Decades of unchecked groundwater
pumping in the county and elsewhere across the state have left
some aquifers severely depleted. Now, the county’s water managers
have less than a year left to devise a plan that manages and
protects groundwater for the long term, yet ensures that Kern
County’s economy can continue to thrive, even with less water.
Although Santa Monica may be the most aggressive Southern California water provider to wean itself from imported supplies, it is hardly the only one looking to remake its water portfolio.
In Los Angeles, a city of about 4 million people, efforts are underway to dramatically slash purchases of imported water while boosting the amount from recycling, stormwater capture, groundwater cleanup and conservation. Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2014 announced a plan to reduce the city’s purchase of imported water from Metropolitan Water District by one-half by 2025 and to provide one-half of the city’s supply from local sources by 2035. (The city considers its Eastern Sierra supplies as imported water.)
Imported water from the Sierra
Nevada and the Colorado River built Southern California. Yet as
drought, climate change and environmental concerns render those
supplies increasingly at risk, the Southland’s cities have ramped
up their efforts to rely more on local sources and less on
imported water.
Far and away the most ambitious goal has been set by the city of
Santa Monica, which in 2014 embarked on a course to be virtually
water independent through local sources by 2023. In the 1990s,
Santa Monica was completely dependent on imported water. Now, it
derives more than 70 percent of its water locally.
The whims of political fate decided
in 2018 that state bond money would not be forthcoming to help
repair the subsidence-damaged parts of Friant-Kern Canal, the
152-mile conduit that conveys water from the San Joaquin River to
farms that fuel a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy along
the east side of the fertile San Joaquin Valley.
The growing leadership of women in water. The Colorado River’s persistent drought and efforts to sign off on a plan to avert worse shortfalls of water from the river. And in California’s Central Valley, promising solutions to vexing water resource challenges.
These were among the topics that Western Water news explored in 2018.
We’re already planning a full slate of stories for 2019. You can sign up here to be alerted when new stories are published. In the meantime, take a look at what we dove into in 2018:
In 1983, a landmark California Supreme Court ruling extended the public trust doctrine to tributary creeks that feed Mono Lake, which is a navigable water body even though the creeks themselves were not. The ruling marked a dramatic shift in water law and forced Los Angeles to cut back its take of water from those creeks in the Eastern Sierra to preserve the lake.
Now, a state appellate court has for the first time extended that same public trust doctrine to groundwater that feeds a navigable river, in this case the Scott River flowing through a picturesque valley of farms and alfalfa in Siskiyou County in the northern reaches of California.
There’s going to be a new governor
in California next year – and a host of challenges both old and
new involving the state’s most vital natural resource, water.
So what should be the next governor’s water priorities?
That was one of the questions put to more than 150 participants
during a wrap-up session at the end of the Water Education
Foundation’s Sept. 20 Water Summit in Sacramento.
As California embarks on its unprecedented mission to harness groundwater pumping, the Arizona desert may provide one guide that local managers can look to as they seek to arrest years of overdraft.
Groundwater is stressed by a demand that often outpaces natural and artificial recharge. In California, awareness of groundwater’s importance resulted in the landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014 that aims to have the most severely depleted basins in a state of balance in about 20 years.
Spurred by drought and a major
policy shift, groundwater management has assumed an unprecedented
mantle of importance in California. Local agencies in the
hardest-hit areas of groundwater depletion are drawing plans to
halt overdraft and bring stressed aquifers to the road of
recovery.
Along the way, an army of experts has been enlisted to help
characterize the extent of the problem and how the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act of 2014 is implemented in a manner
that reflects its original intent.
Springs are where groundwater becomes surface water, acting as openings
where subsurface water can discharge onto the ground or directly
into other water bodies. They can also be considered the
consequence of an overflowing
aquifer. As a result, springs often serve as headwaters to streams.
This printed issue of Western Water looks at California
groundwater and whether its sustainability can be assured by
local, regional and state management. For more background
information on groundwater please refer to the Foundation’s
Layperson’s Guide to Groundwater.
This printed issue of Western Water examines
groundwater management and the extent to which stakeholders
believe more efforts are needed to preserve and restore the
resource.
This printed issue of Western Water examines
groundwater banking, a water management strategy with appreciable
benefits but not without challenges and controversy.
This printed issue of Western Water looks at hydraulic
fracturing, or “fracking,” in California. Much of the information
in the article was presented at a conference hosted by the
Groundwater Resources Association of California.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
Water as a renewable resource is depicted in this 18×24 inch
poster. Water is renewed again and again by the natural
hydrologic cycle where water evaporates, transpires from plants,
rises to form clouds, and returns to the earth as precipitation.
Excellent for elementary school classroom use.
Fashioned after the popular California Water Map, this 24×36 inch
poster was extensively re-designed in 2017 to better illustrate
the value and use of groundwater in California, the main types of
aquifers, and the connection between groundwater and surface
water.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to Groundwater is an in-depth,
easy-to-understand publication that provides background and
perspective on groundwater. The guide explains what groundwater
is – not an underground network of rivers and lakes! – and the
history of its use in California.
The 28-page Layperson’s Guide to
Water Rights Law, recognized as the most thorough explanation of
California water rights law available to non-lawyers, traces the
authority for water flowing in a stream or reservoir, from a
faucet or into an irrigation ditch through the complex web of
California water rights.
