Without a shot being fired or a writ being filed, California has gone through an overnight revolution that could – or at least should – rewrite the regulation of what is, in times of drought, the single greatest source of water in the state.
The source, of course, is groundwater, and on Tuesday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a three-bill package of legislation to finally drag California into 21st Century reality by regulating groundwater extraction.
The need to do so was urgent. During deep droughts, California farmers drill ever deeper and pump ever longer from underground aquifers, creating a withdrawal deficit that may never be made up.
In some parts of the Central Valley, subsidence from over-pumping groundwater has lowered land levels as much as 30 feet. And during the current drought, as surface water supplies have been radically reduced or cut off to farmers entirely, many have resorted to digging new wells at a frantic pace, the long-term consequences be dammed.
During this drought, groundwater extraction may account for as much as 60 percent of the state’s water consumption. But no one knows precisely how much water is being removed because well water is often not measured, many (if not most) wells aren’t metered, and no one has to or wants to share withdrawal data anyway.
Which is one reason California was the only state in the nation without significant groundwater regulation.
The new legislation will change all that, mandating the creation of “groundwater sustainability agencies” that will eventually prepare plans and set rules to regulate pumping all over the state. Local agencies will be able to restrict pumping rates, shut down wells in some cases, and impose penalties on landowners who don’t comply.
It is a historic shift in water policy, but don’t expect the new laws to make any immediate difference in preservation of the state’s water supplies, because the plan doesn’t go into effect until January, and local agencies will have between five and seven years to develop groundwater plans that won’t have to be fully implemented until 2040.
There is also a question as to whether a clause in the law will allow the public disclosure of well records needed to regulate pumping.
So, while regulating California’s groundwater is a crucial piece of long-term water policy, don’t expect any results for years. Meanwhile, Sonoma Valley leads the state with a voluntary Groundwater Basin Management Plan, and the Sonoma County Water Agency is now developing a similar plan for the Santa Rosa Plain.
There is an entire menu of other solutions to the state’s water dilemma, most of which have been collected into a campaign called the California Water Challenge, orchestrated by Next 10, the nonprofit advocacy group founded by venture capitalist F. Noel Perry.
The challenge is presented in the form of a game that offers choices to eliminate the state’s projected “water gap” of 4.9 million acre feet by 2030.
Choices range from urban storm water recovery and irrigation efficiency improvements to cloud seeding, desalination and retiring marginal irrigated farmland.
We’ll explore the choices in this space in days to come, but you can play the game and save some water yourself by going to cawaterchallenge.org.
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