Wells running dry as groundwater recedes

Metered wells could be in the works if drought continues|

If praying for more rain isn’t working, and conserving usage isn’t sufficient to provide enough water for Sonoma, maybe it’s time to look down – underground. There, however, the picture gets murkier.

“We can see an open storage reservoir, like Lake Sonoma or Lake Mendocino, how much water is in there, and how much the decline is,” said Dan Muelrath. “Groundwater is much trickier. You can’t see it.”

Muelrath is the executive director of the Valley of the Moon Water District, which is holding a public hearing on the groundwater situation in Sonoma Valley next Tuesday, May 5, at the regular VOMWD board meeting in El Verano.

But well-driller Ray Larbre says he and other drillers “know what’s going on underground – but nobody asks us.” Larbre has lived all his life on the same property on Arnold Drive, carrying on his father’s well-drilling business, Larbre Well Drilling and Pump, founded in 1932.

“Everybody’s turning to groundwater to solve their irrigation problems, for landscape and around their houses,” said Larbre. “All they’re doing now by drilling these wells for residential use is creating more draw from the strata and less water for everybody else.”

The 71-year-old well-driller has seen wet years and dry, but nothing like this current drought. Recalling the drought years of 1976-78, he said, “That drought was severe but this one is more severe and long lasting – it’s really changed the landscape as far as I’m concerned.”

Concerns over the increased use of groundwater, and its depletion, prompted the state to pass the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act last year. One of its key components is the creation of Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSA), tasked with assessing conditions in local groundwater basins and adopting locally based sustainability plans.

Next week’s public hearing will discuss the formation of a local GSA to manage the resource. The VOMWD will open the floor to a public hearing on the question of which of the affected agencies should take the lead in forming the local GSA – Valley of the Moon, City of Sonoma, the Sonoma County Water Agency or the County itself.

The Sonoma City Council heard a presentation on the subject last month, at its April 6 meeting, from Jay Jasperse of the Sonoma County Water Agency. He reported that three of Sonoma County’s 14 basins and sub-basins are currently designated at medium-priority groundwater risk: Sonoma Valley, Santa Rosa Plain and Petaluma. None are a “high-priority” basin in critical overdraft, at least so far.

Larbre is particularly concerned about rural residential users who are already hooked up to a municipal water utility, like Valley of the Moon Water District or the City of Sonoma, who nonetheless choose to drill a well so they can water their garden or hobby vineyard. “People are more concerned about their garden than they are that there’s not going to be any water eventually.“

Fully two-thirds of water used in the Sonoma Valley comes from wells – from groundwater, the source tapped by the thousands of wells pocketing the Valley floor. Muelrath, general manager of VOMWD, puts the overall figure at 10,000 acre feet of water per year pumped out for all uses, including agriculture, rural residential and municipal. Only about half that number comes from the Russian River underground aqueduct, sold to customers via his water district or the City of Sonoma.

If water were an infinite resource, those numbers would be no problem. But just like the clean air we used to breathe, it’s not. Groundwater from aquifers is declining statewide – in some places dramatically. There’s been a decrease in the water table of almost 30 feet in the agricultural Central Valley, near the town of Mendota, and in the same area there’s been subsidence, an actual sinking of the earth to fill the depleted cavities.

Yet even though groundwater is the most common resource tied to agriculture, it was completely unregulated – no required meters on wells or even tracking of groundwater use – until September 2014. That’s when Gov. Brown signed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, requiring that California’s groundwater resources be sustainably managed by local agencies.

Though “sustainable” means many things to many people, when it comes to groundwater it means no depletion over time. If you take out 200 acre-feet of water, you have to put back 200 acre-feet, preferably through rainfall or other catchment sources, like rivers and streams that soak a portion of their flow into the earth.

Muelrath believes conservation can help, and to a certain extent may have helped already. “I think a major part of the solution that’s being overlooked, in the rural residential and agriculture area, is conservation. When we look at the straight numbers, there’s no doubt we have conserved – but there’s more to go. Even in our agency here, we’re at 19 percent less water use in over a year. But if you look back, we are 34 percent down from where we were a decade ago, 2004.”

If anything, however, well-digger Larbre is less optimistic. “The population and the demand on the water was maybe 10 percent in the 1970s of what it is today. We have much more demand on the groundwater than we ever did before,” he said.

Larbre pointed out that the areas being developed now are much wider than previously, more so on the east side of the Valley than the west. “There’s a lot of commercial development on Eighth Street East that has impacted the water table out there.” He acknowledges that, though we have more vineyards than ever, they are getting better at drip irrigation and managing the water table – but it all adds up.

Some particularly “green” areas – where thick grass grows, such as at Sonoma Golf Course and Hanna Boys Center – have drilled deep wells, 800 or 900 feet down, to stay away from the shallower water sources that might impact more residential users. But those deep wells are only getting deeper as the water is depleted.

There are three wells on the property of Larbre Well Drilling on Arnold Drive. One of them reaches a depth of 1,000 feet and is used to monitor static water levels on the west side of the Valley. Larbre, who’s been keeping records since the ‘90s, said that since that time, the water level has declined about 85 feet, most of it in the past two years.

At some point, groundwater management will probably mean metering wells, a step that just a few years ago was anathema to most well users, who thought that the water under their land was theirs. Larbre has no such illusions. “The state’s position on groundwater is, unless you can prove that the water that came down from rain went through your property into your well, and that’s only the water that you’re using, the state owns the water.”

Which means the state can, and probably will, require meters on wells, reportage of water use, and start implementing charges for groundwater use, sooner or later.

Whatever water utility takes the lead as the local Groundwater Sustainability Agency, the act requires achieving sustainability by 2042. “We’re getting a lot of feedback from the public that that’s too far out,” said Muelrath. “But this is a long-term process. Our current voluntary plan is a good foundation, but it needs to work, and no agency has the authority to enforce a voluntary plan.”

The public hearing on groundwater in the Sonoma Valley, and the formation of a Groundwater Sustainability Agency, will be held at the VOMWD board meeting Room, 19039 Bay St., El Verano, on May 5. The board meeting begins at 6:30 p.m., and the hearing will start at about 6:45 p.m. “We would hope that everybody from the Valley shows up,” said Muelrath.

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