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.
The Mojave Water Agency began delivering imported water last
week to a storage aquifer near Barstow, bringing welcome relief
to the water table there that has hit a record low. The MWA
Board of Directors unanimously approved the delivery of
5,000-acre-feet of water to the Centro Basin during its April
28 board meeting. The Centro Basin is one of five subareas
or sub-basins, which are defined and separated in part by
earthquake faults and other geological features but also are
interconnected to some extent, water engineers say.
An online
short course starting Thursday will provide
registrants the opportunity to learn more about how groundwater
is monitored, assessed and sustainably managed. The class,
offered by University of California, Davis and several
other organizations in cooperation with the Water Education
Foundation, will be held May 12, 19, 26 and
June 2, 16 from 9 a.m. to noon. If you attended
the Foundation’s Water 101 Workshop in April,
you get a discount on registration! at $60!
Fractures have appeared within Kern County’s largest
groundwater agency as pressure mounts for it to show the state
how it plans to address the region’s massive groundwater
deficit. Four water entities recently notified the Kern
Groundwater Authority they were pulling out of the 16-member
group to write their own groundwater sustainability plan. That
will add a sixth plan covering the Kern subbasin, which extends
across the San Joaquin Valley portion of the county.
In farming areas across the Central Valley, a well-drilling
frenzy has accelerated over the last year as growers turn to
pumping more groundwater during the drought, even as falling
water levels leave hundreds of nearby homes with dry wells.
Counties have continued freely issuing well-drilling permits in
the years since California passed a landmark law, the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 … Some state
legislators are now supporting a bill that they say would
strengthen oversight and limit the well-drilling frenzy by
requiring a review of permits for new wells by the same local
agencies that are charged with managing groundwater.
Multiple San Joaquin Valley groundwater projects got a
significant shot of state funding this week to kickstart
recharge, and other, projects. On Monday, the Department of
Water Resources (DWR) announced $150 million was awarded to 20
agencies through its first round of the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Grant Program. That includes almost $84 million for
11 agencies in the San Joaquin Valley.
During drought years, California relies heavily on its
groundwater supply. As droughts become longer and more intense
with climate change, it’s becoming more important than ever to
“bank” excess surface water during stormy weather patterns in
order to provide some long-term insurance. … [Dr. Helen
Dahlke, a hydrology expert at UC Davis] and a team of
researchers recently shared findings from their study showing
how California’s 8 million acres of farmland could be tapped as
one way to help get water back into the ground through a
process called ‘Ag-MAR.’
You can’t see it, but how we live impacts it and plays a vital
role in almost everything that happens in Arizona. Groundwater
is located deep beneath the surface and stored in aquifers,
which are porous rock that contain or transport
water. About 40% of the state’s water supply is
underground, with that number likely to increase due to
reductions in available water from the Colorado River. An
ongoing concern is what would happen if the valuable resource
got contaminated.
For the past year, California’s Department of Water Resources
has been taking measurements of aquifers in central and
southern parts of the state. The same will be done for the
Sacramento Valley over the next several weeks. This project,
which is known as an Airborne Electromagnetic (AEM) Survey, is
a direct result of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act,
which calls for local and state water agencies to work together
to better understand and manage groundwater supply.
California is deploying cutting-edge technology that can ‘see’
underground water. A giant electrified ring suspended from
a helicopter will make a never-before-seen picture of a world
beneath our feet. Wells in the Valley are running dry. Drilling
deeper is more expensive and sometimes still fails to find
water. When it does, water quality is often worse, containing
minerals like arsenic.
California prohibits farmers from growing crops with
chemical-laced wastewater from fracking. Yet the state still
allows them to use water produced by conventional oil
drilling—a chemical soup that contains many of the same toxic
compounds. When rumors spread several years ago that California
was growing some of the nation’s nuts, citrus and vegetables
with wastewater produced from hydraulic fracturing, known as
fracking, regulators said that would be illegal.
Water resources are declining in many regions of the world. Due
to climate change, increased air temperatures, and reduced
precipitation, we will face a decline in water resources in the
future. … Lampinen et al investigated soil and
plant data and evapotranspiration for irrigation management of
walnut trees in California, USA. Fernandes-Silva, by
examining the effect of different irrigation regimes (dryland
irrigation with 30% and 100% water requirement) on yield and
WUE of olive, reported that crop evapotranspiration (ETc) is
the most influential parameter in changes in fruit yield.
New data and reports now show that the Paso Robles groundwater
basin is being severely depleted — with unsustainable amounts
pumped throughout the entire last decade. As a result, it is
now considered a critically overdrafted groundwater basin in
need of management to ensure the long-term sustainability of
the water source…. Blame for the status of the groundwater
basin is tossed around between lack of regulation from local
politicians and overpumping from vintners…. But vintners
and local industry leaders interviewed by The Tribune said
placing the blame on the wine industry is oversimplifying a
complicated issue.
On April 19, 2022, Clark County District Court Judge Bita
Yeager issued a decision vacating the Nevada State Engineer’s
(State Engineer) June 15, 2020, Order 1309. Under Order 1309,
the State Engineer merged seven independently designated
hydrographic basins into one basin known as the Lower White
River Flow System (LWRFS) to be conjunctively managed. The
State Engineer did so based on scientific evidence as to the
previously delineated basins’ hydrological connection.
In a dramatic shift from California’s history of allowing
landowners to freely pump and consume water from their own
wells, Sonoma County’s rural residents and many others will
soon begin paying for the water drawn from beneath their
feet…. The residential fees are based on an assumption
that rural residents typically pump a half-acre foot of well
water a year. Most homes do not have water meters and none will
be installed under the fee program. Large groundwater water
users — including ranches, cities, water districts and
businesses — would pay fees based on the volume of water drawn
from their wells.
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.
