“As Southern California’s most recent rainstorm was moving into the Inland Empire on Thursday morning, May 23, San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District celebrated the completion of an enhanced recharge project designed to enable the district to capture water from Santa Ana River during rainstorms, improving the district’s ability to recharge groundwater supply by 80,000 acre-feet a year.
The district hosted its partners Western Municipal Water District and Riverside Public Utilities as well as other local water agencies for the opening of a new diversion channel and sedimentation basin constructed south of Seven Oaks Dam and just north of Greenspot Road last year. … ”
Read more from Highland Community News here: Stormwater recharge abilities enhanced at Seven Oaks Dam
Ellen Hanak delivers four priorities for managing the implementation of SGMA in the San Joaquin Valley
The San Joaquin Valley is California’s largest agricultural region and an important contributor to the nation’s food supply, producing more than half of the state’s agricultural output. Irrigated agriculture is the region’s main economic driver and predominant water user.
However, the San Joaquin Valley is at a pivotal point. It is ground zero for many of California’s most difficult water management problems, including groundwater overdraft, contaminated drinking water, and declines in habitat and native species. The Valley has high rates of unemployment and pockets of extreme poverty, challenges that increase when the farm economy suffers.
The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act requires local water users to bring their overdrafted groundwater basins into balance by the early 2040s. With the largest groundwater overdraft in the State, the implementation of SGMA will have a broad impact on Valley agriculture in coming years, and will likely entail fallowing of significant amounts of farmland.
“Water and the Future of the San Joaquin Valley” is the third installment of a research project by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) Water Policy Center on solutions to the San Joaquin Valley’s water challenges. Ellen Hanak is director of the PPIC Water Policy Center and a senior fellow at PPIC. At the May meeting of the California Water Commission, she discussed the findings of their research and recommendations regarding the challenges facing the San Joaquin Valley.
Click here to read this article at Maven’s Notebook.
Kathleen Miller writes,
“Implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was always going to be tricky. Part of the necessary growing pains of SGMA is determining how the revolutionary statute interacts with traditional tenets of water law. As with any other sweeping legislative change, SGMA does not provide direct answers for every practical question which arises as the law is put into place.
Take SGMA’s so called “six deadly sins” – the undesirable results that newly formed groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) are tasked with avoiding, running the gamut from seawater intrusion to subsidence. One of the ways to combat undesirable results is to implement a more robust groundwater recharge program – diverting high surface water flows during wet years (as we just experienced) to aquifers. In fact, we’ve begun to see innovative projects, such as Recharge Net Metering andFlood-MAR, sprout up in the wake of SGMA to do exactly that. But how do we get water for those projects in the first place? … ”
Read more from the Legal Planet blog here: Groundwater recharge in the SGMA era
“A team of Stanford University researchers believe they have identified the best way to replenish the shrinking aquifers beneath California’s Central Valley. The groundwater beneath the Central Valley has been steadily depleting, particularly as the state’s $50 billion agricultural industry relied on it during a series of droughts. Each year, more water exits the aquifer than goes into it.
The study from Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences, published in the journal Water Resources Research, found that unless action is taken, the ground in that region will sink more than 13 feet over the next 20 years. … ”
Read more from the Sacramento Bee here: The Central Valley is sinking as farmers drill for water. But it can be saved, study says
“In California, the amount of water exiting aquifers under the state’s most productive farming region far surpasses the amount of water trickling back in. That rampant overdraft has caused land across much of the region to sink like a squeezed out sponge, permanently depleting groundwater storage capacity and damaging infrastructure.
The trend – and a 2014 mandate for sustainable groundwater management in the state – has ignited interest in replenishing aquifers in California’s Central Valley through managed flooding of the ground above them. … ”
Read more from Stanford News here: Stanford study offers a way to map where flooded fields best replenish groundwater
“City officials approved a plan for a new groundwater sustainability project, hoping it will be a solution to increase the supply of groundwater and find a place for excess effluent water coming to the Tehachapi Waste Water Treatment Plant. The benefits will not appear for decades, when the project is complete.
The Tehachapi City Council unanimously approved this second of five phases at its April 1 meeting. … ”
Read more from the Tehachapi News here: Tehachapi: ‘It will change the way the city uses our water;’ City Council approves plan to study ways to increase groundwater supply
“Parts of Sonoma Valley, particularly southeast of the city of Sonoma and in the El Verano/Fowler Creek areas, have seen a persistent decline in groundwater levels over the last decade – and it may be expanding. These chronic declines, based on data from the USGS and the Sonoma County Water Agency, indicate that groundwater withdrawals are occurring at a rate exceeding the rate of replenishment within the deeper aquifer zones of southern Sonoma Valley.
Saltwater intrusion is also threatening to compromise groundwater quality at Sonoma’s southernmost tip. … ”
Read more from The Kenwood Press here: Sonoma: Focus is on wells as groundwater board does its research
“On a quiet industrial side street near 41st Avenue and Soquel Drive, the Santa Cruz Water Department has been quietly pumping millions of gallons of water through temporary PVC piping. Every minute, about 400 gallons flow past pressure gauges and shut-off valves into a 2-foot-high concrete box that marks the top of Beltz Well 12. If a pilot program goes well, this whole system could play a pivotal role in the water security of communities from Aptos to UCSC.
Normally, water is pumping out of this well, not into it. As part of the reversal process, engineers went into the well and removed column piping, which now lies in a pile under a plastic tarp off to the side. Two 35,000-gallon tanks sit empty. … ”
Read more from Good Times Santa Cruz here: Inside Santa Cruz’s environmentally friendly water recharge
“A pilot project banking groundwater in the Newman area is showing positive results. The project is a joint effort of the Central California Irrigation District and the Del Puerto Water District, said Chris White, CCID general manager.
The site is located on 20 acres of property west of Eastin Road, within the Del Puerto Water District. … ”
Read more from Westside Connect here: Newman: Groundwater recharge project shows encouraging results
“The City Council approved a regional plan for managing the area’s groundwater resources, which brings a measure of local control and to qualify for state funds for water-related projects.
The Fremont Basin Integrated Regional Water Plan has been in the works for at least four years, filling in a hole in water plans in the area, as the surrounding groundwater basins already have plans in place. … ”
Read more from the Antelope Valley Press here: California City OKs groundwater plan
