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.
On the eve of its first subbasin probationary hearing, the
state Water Resources Control Board announced it will vote on
whether to reduce a controversial groundwater extraction
fee. The board will vote at its March 19 meeting on
whether to cut the fee from $40 to $20-per-acre-foot for well
owners in a subbasin placed on probation. It will hold
its first probationary hearing on the Tulare Lake subbasin,
which covers Kings County, on April 16. Then the Tule subbasin,
in the southern half of the valley portion of Tulare County,
will come up for hearing Sept. 17. The extraction fee would
only be charged if the Water Board had to step in and
administer a subbasin in cases where it finds local groundwater
agencies aren’t up to the job.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge confirmed that the
Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin is one connected basin—not
separate subbasins—allowing for the groundwater adjudication to
move forward following a year and a half of delays and
litigation. … The Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin is one of
California’s 21 critically overdrafted basins that was required
under the 2014 California Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act (SGMA) to create a groundwater sustainability agency (GSA)
and corresponding groundwater sustainability plan.
The Friant-Kern Canal was called out specifically as one of the
reasons the state should take over pumping in the Tule
groundwater subbasin in Tulare County. The recommendation was
contained in a recently released staff report to the Water
Resources Control Board. While the report stated groundwater
management plans covering the subbasin didn’t adequately
address subsidence and continued depletion of the aquifer and
degradation of water quality in general, it also noted the
significant harm to the Friant-Kern Canal, which brings water
152 miles south from Millerton Lake to Arvin. Excessive
overpumping caused land beneath a 33-mile stretch of the
Friant-Kern Canal to collapse, creating a sag that reduced the
canal’s carrying capacity south of Pixley by 60%.
Arizona officials said a Saudi-owned company they targeted over
its use of groundwater to grow forage crops is moving its
farming operation out of a valley in the Southwestern state’s
rural west. Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Arizona State Land
Department announced late Thursday that Fondomonte Arizona is
officially no longer pumping water in the Butler Valley
groundwater basin. Some residents of La Paz County had
complained that the company’s pumping was threatening their
wells. A statement by Hobbs says an on-site inspection had
confirmed that Fondomonte was moving to vacate the property.
Fondomonte has several other farms elsewhere in Arizona that
are not affected by the decision.
A Saudi Arabian farm previously permitted to pump unlimited
amounts of groundwater to grow alfalfa for dairy cows overseas
has stopped irrigating its crops on state land in Arizona’s
Butler Valley, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs announced Thursday.
Hobbs and the Arizona State Land Department announced after a
recent inspection Fondomonte had stopped pumping water in the
Butler Valley groundwater basin and has begun to take steps to
leave the property. Hobbs took full credit for the outcome,
saying it was a result of her move to terminate and decline to
renew Fondomonte’s leases on state land in the area, part of a
broader crackdown from Hobbs and her Democratic attorney
general Kris Mayes.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge confirmed that the
Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin is one connected basin—not
separate subbasins—allowing for the groundwater adjudication to
move forward following a year-and-a-half of delays and
litigation. … The Cuyama Valley Groundwater Basin is one
of California’s 21 critically overdrafted basins that was
required under the 2014 California Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA) to create a groundwater sustainability
agency (GSA) and corresponding groundwater sustainability plan.
After the California Department of Water Resources approved the
sustainability plan, which called for a 60 percent water use
reduction in 20 years, agricultural corporations Bolthouse
Farms and Grimmway Farms filed a groundwater adjudication
against every landowner in the Cuyama Valley in August
2021.
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) has mapped
out the state over the last few years to gain a better
understanding of its groundwater basins. The department has
been using new technology combined with helicopters to create a
database about what lies below. Out of sight, out of mind, many
people might not think about the water that could lie below our
feet, but the DWR knows groundwater is critical to California.
The state has 515 basins that can hold up to five times more
groundwater than all surface water combined. However, state
officials need to learn more about these basins. With phase one
of their airborne electromagnetic survey project done, they’re
one step closer.
National Groundwater Awareness Week is next week, and in the
spirit of promoting groundwater knowledge, the Department of
Water Resources (DWR) is excited to announce that its
innovative groundwater mapping project is complete and will
provide critical information about our underground water
supply. The
Statewide Airborne Electromagnetic (AEM) Survey Project has
now completed surveys in all high-and-medium-priority
groundwater basins in California. AEM surveys use
state-of-the-art helicopter-based technology to scan the
earth’s subsurface to depths of up to 1,000 feet, like taking
an MRI of the earth, to visualize the aquifer structures
beneath our feet. You can see the AEM equipment in action in
this DWR video: DWR’s Airborne
Electromagnetic (AEM) Surveys: The AEM Method
(youtube.com).
With National Groundwater
Awareness Week approaching and 2024 marking
the 10ᵗʰ anniversary of the Sustainable Groundwater Management
Act in California, upcoming Water Education Foundation
tours and events will help you gain a deeper understanding of
groundwater fundamentals. Join us April 5 for our
annual Water
101 Workshop, which includes a session that
will provide an overview of the state’s groundwater
resources, its importance in the state’s water supply, its
history of use and overuse and the Sustainable Groundwater
Management Act (SGMA). Learn what other topics will be covered
and register
here. Workshop participants can also join
the Groundwater
Tour the day before the workshop. And in
April, our three-day Central Valley
Tour will have a strong focus on groundwater as it
moves through the San Joaquin Valley.
After years of groundwater decline and failed legislative
action, a court decision in January affirmed the state’s right
to limit groundwater pumping using the most current scientific
data, but full implementation of the ruling may take some time.
Last week, the state engineer — Nevada’s top water regulator —
expanded on how the state will manage water resources in the
aftermath of the recent Nevada Supreme Court decision that
affirmed the state’s authority to develop science-based
solutions to over-pumping, including managing surface water and
groundwater as a single connected source when determining water
rights. In the coming years, the court’s decision will have
sweeping ramifications for Nevada, state engineer Adam Sullivan
told lawmakers.
Fallout over the ever sinking Friant-Kern Canal could affect
growers throughout the Tule subbasin regardless of whether they
get water from the canal. The state Water Resources
Control Board already has the subbasin in its cross hairs for
neglecting to create a coordinated plan to bring aquifers into
balance under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act
(SGMA). A hearing for the Tule subbasin is scheduled for
September. Now, new – and worsened – subsidence (land
sinking) beneath the Friant-Kern Canal has prompted the canal’s
operator to seek help from the Water Board.
Transitioning towards sustainable groundwater usage is becoming
more accessible for farmers and Groundwater Sustainability
Agencies (GSAs) through involvement in the LandFlex Grant
Program. The Department of Water Resources (DWR), which
developed the program, prioritizes access to those living in
rural areas with critically overdrafted basins. LandFlex
provides farmers with resources to comply with requirements of
the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) while
increasing availability of groundwater to surrounding local
communities. With depleting underground water availability, the
DWR hopes to accelerate sustainable groundwater usage
immediately, rather than SGMA’s goal of groundwater
sustainability by 2040.
From January to February, Southern California went from quite
dry to overwhelmingly wet, as a series of storms dropped more
than a year’s worth of water in just a few weeks, loading up
the L.A. River. Given that our dry months are coming up, just
how much of that stormwater were we able to hold on to? And
could we be doing better? The main way that we capture
stormwater is by letting it soak into the Earth and travel
through the soil into underground reservoirs. Back in the
day, this would happen all across places like the L.A. Basin,
but as we paved over much of the area, we lost much of our
ability to sequester rainfall. That’s where spreading
grounds, like those in the San Fernando Valley (seen below),
come in.
Report details importance of groundwater to California’s water
resources and poses questions on funding and policies for the
Legislature to consider in moving forward with implementing the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
The small Kern-Tulare Water District moved forward recently in
breaking away from two other groundwater agencies to form its
own independent groundwater sustainability agency (GSA). As the
state’s historic Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)
turns 10 this year and the 2040 deadline to bring aquifers into
balance edges closer, groundwater agencies have splintered and
reformed throughout the southern San Joaquin Valley. Most
notably, the Kern Groundwater Authority which initially had 16
water district members, reorganized as most of those
members have broken off to form their own, or regional GSAs.
Kern-Tulare, which covers 19,600 acres, and straddles two water
subbasins and two counties, had always planned to go
independent …
The Butte County Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted the
Butte County Recharge Action Plan during its meeting Tuesday in
an effort to help bolster groundwater reserves throughout the
region. Department of Water and Resource Conservation Director
Kamie Loeser brought the item before the board with a
presentation by Assistant Director Christina Buck, who helped
head the project. Loeser said the plan was spurred by Gov.
Gavin Newsom’s executive order last year that loosened
restrictions on collecting floodwater. After the order, Butte
County put forth a letter of intent to create a project. …
With the approval of the board, the plan will also be sent to
the California Department of Water Resources. Buck said the
plan was also derived from the considerable amount of stormy
weather last year that led to flooding throughout the county,
adding that the plan also culminates from data and studies
conducted.
New satellite-based research reveals how land along the coast
is slumping into the ocean, compounding the danger from global
sea level rise. A major culprit: overpumping of
groundwater. The most vulnerable areas of Boston have been
sinking up to 3.8 centimeters per decade, which adds up to
nearly 10 centimeters by 2050, based on the analysis of
satellite data from 2007 to 2020. Parts of New York City
and Long Island are sinking over 3 centimeters per decade.
… The new research from Virginia Tech and the
U.S. Geological Survey used satellite data to show the mounting
threats to coastal communities. Nearly 40 percent of Americans
live along coasts, where aging buildings, roads and rails face
structural damage from floods.
On a party-line vote, an Arizona Senate Committee approved a
bill Wednesday to establish a rural groundwater management
setup that’s favored by many farming interest groups but
opposed by many environmentalists and some rural community
leaders. The bill, introduced by Buckeye Republican Sen. Sine
Kerr, would establish a complex legal and governmental process
to designate groundwater basin management areas with the goal
of reducing groundwater depletion while maintaining the area’s
economy and agricultural base. The Republican-led Senate
Natural Resources, Energy and Water Committee voted 4-3 to
support the measure. It would allow some mandatory conservation
measures while still protecting existing farmers’ groundwater
rights, as certified by the Arizona Department of Water
Resources. It would also appropriate $40 million to ADWR to pay
for unspecified measures for farmers to achieve better water
conservation.
A new but little-known change in
California law designating aquifers as “natural infrastructure”
promises to unleash a flood of public funding for projects that
increase the state’s supply of groundwater.
The change is buried in a sweeping state budget-related law,
enacted in July, that also makes it easier for property owners
and water managers to divert floodwater for storage underground.
A new underground mapping technology
that reveals the best spots for storing surplus water in
California’s Central Valley is providing a big boost to the
state’s most groundwater-dependent communities.
The maps provided by the California Department of Water Resources
for the first time pinpoint paleo valleys and similar prime
underground storage zones traditionally found with some guesswork
by drilling exploratory wells and other more time-consuming
manual methods. The new maps are drawn from data on the
composition of underlying rock and soil gathered by low-flying
helicopters towing giant magnets.
The unique peeks below ground are saving water agencies’
resources and allowing them to accurately devise ways to capture
water from extreme storms and soak or inject the surplus
underground for use during the next drought.
“Understanding where you’re putting and taking water from really
helps, versus trying to make multimillion-dollar decisions based
on a thumb and which way the wind is blowing,” said Aaron Fukuda,
general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, an early
adopter of the airborne electromagnetic or
AEM technology in California.
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.