SGMA in the News

On February 7, the California Department of Water Resources released a draft Handbook for Water Budget Development: With or Without Models (Water Budget Handbook), a single-volume, technical reference that systematically presents existing information on various methods and data sources for developing water budgets. The Water Budget Handbook can help in the development of water budgets for any geographic area and time period, and uses modeling and non-modeling approaches. Public comment is now open on the draft document and closes on May 7, 2020. More information about the development of the handbook can be found in the Water Budget Handbook Story Map. A recording of the high-level overview webinar of the Water Budget handbook from March 12th is available for viewing.

Please join us for an interactive public webinar intended to help water budget developers make better use of the Water Budget Handbook. Please take this short survey on water budget development. DWR will the use the results of the survey to tailor the content for the interactive webinar. Please register for the webinar to participate.

The agenda will cover discussion and Q&A of resources and techniques available in the Water Budget Handbook relating to the components or aspects of water budget development that are identified as being the most challenging/important in the survey.

STATEWIDE NEWS

With sustainability plans filed, groundwater agencies now must figure out how to pay for them:  “The bill is coming due, literally, to protect and restore groundwater in California.  Local agencies in the most depleted groundwater basins in California spent months putting together plans to show how they will achieve balance in about 20 years.  Now, after submitting those plans to the state in January, groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) must figure how to pay for them. Protecting, preserving and restoring critically overdrafted groundwater basins takes money — to administer the plan, and eventually for the brick-and-mortar groundwater projects that will help keep large swaths of San Joaquin Valley agriculture in business. Passing those costs to the people pulling water from an aquifer could be complicated. ... ”  Read more from Western Water here: With sustainability plans filed, groundwater agencies now must figure out how to pay for them

Groundwater sustainability planning undeterred by COVID-19:  “COVID-19 has forced many of us to find creative ways of working together while sheltering in place. For California’s new groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs), that means bringing together diverse groups of stakeholders in virtual forums to develop and implement state-mandated groundwater sustainability plans. We talked to Dave Ceppos—who, as managing senior mediator at Sacramento State’s Consensus and Collaboration Program, is working with many GSAs—about how the pandemic is affecting the complex public outreach process required by the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). … ”  Read more from the PPIC here:  Groundwater sustainability planning undeterred by COVID-19

A low snowpack makes it imperative to better manage groundwater supplies. Here’s how.  “Despite the much-needed April showers we saw this week, our normally wet January and February were bone dry in most of California. So it came as little surprise when the annual April 1 snowpack measurement in the Sierras came in low, at about 53% of average statewide. It’s another important reminder of how California’s weather, and consequently our water supplies, are swinging to greater extremes.  The low snowpack and extreme weather it signals make it more imperative than ever to carefully manage another part of our water system: underground water supplies. … ”  Continue reading at the Environmental Defense Fund here: A low snowpack makes it imperative to better manage groundwater supplies. Here’s how.

Groundwater might be newest cash crop for Valley farmers:  “San Joaquin Valley farmers may soon have another crop to sell along with almonds, tomatoes, and peppers — the groundwater beneath their land.  Proposed groundwater markets have popped up in just about every groundwater sustainability plan (GSP) filed with the state Jan. 31.  One such market is about to launch its first phase within the next week in Kern County.  The proposed markets are being touted by some as a way to limit groundwater pumping while still allowing farmers the flexibility to optimize their resources.  Others are worried groundwater markets could devastate disadvantaged communities and small farmers who don’t have the resources to compete with giant farming companies such as Wonderful and Boswell. … ”  Read more from GV Wire here: Groundwater might be newest cash crop for Valley farmers

California groundwater wells receive grades for improvement and degradation:  “In California, groundwater is a major source for drinking and other uses. Identifying where groundwater quality is getting better or worse is essential for managing groundwater resources.  A new study conducted by a team from the California Water Science Center, led by Research Hydrologist Bryant Jurgens, assessed areas of improving and degrading groundwater-quality by using a new metric for scoring. The scoring was based on how high chemical concentrations were and whether they were getting better or worse and how rapidly or slowly they were changing. This work was conducted in nine hydrogeologic provinces throughout California. The location of the provinces generally corresponded to groundwater basins identified by the California Department of Water Resources. ... ”  Read more from the USGS here: California groundwater wells receive grades for improvement and degradation

NORTH COAST

Mendocino:  Groundwater management hearings set for late April:  “Registered voters that live in Mendocino have the opportunity and responsibility to decide the direction of groundwater management in Mendocino at two upcoming Mendocino City Community Services District Public Hearings scheduled for April 16 and 27.  The purpose of the April 16 hearing is to consider the adoption of Resolutions of Intention to adopt an amendment to the Groundwater Extraction Permit, re-adopt the Water Shortage Contingency Plan and its accompanying Ordinance.  … ” Read more from the Fort Bragg Advocate here:  Groundwater management hearings set for late April

SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY

What’s the plan to end groundwater overdraft in the San Joaquin Valley?  “SGMA requires water users to bring their groundwater basins into long-term balance over the next two decades. Although there are no easy solutions, the math is simple: bringing these basins into balance will require expanding water supplies, reducing water demands, or a combination of these two approaches.  Our in-depth study of water solutions for the San Joaquin Valley found that about a quarter of the region’s 1.8 million acre-feet (maf) of annual overdraft could be filled with new supplies at a cost that local water users can afford. Among supply options, by far the most promising approach is expanding groundwater recharge: storing more of the runoff from large storms in underground aquifers. Filling the remaining three-quarters of the gap will likely require demand reductions. Since agriculture is the predominant water user, this will entail taking some farmland—at least 500,000 acres—out of production. Giving farmers the flexibility to trade water—so it can be used on the most productive lands—can reduce the costs of ending overdraft by two-thirds. … ”  Read more from the PPIC here:  What’s the plan to end groundwater overdraft in the San Joaquin Valley?

Price of reclaimed water still too high for ag:  “If you’re a Central Valley farmer and haven’t yet been hit up by someone about reusing crummy water for irrigation — just wait.  Companies are springing up all over with the latest gizmo they believe will take nasty, salty water, mostly from shallow aquifers on the valley’s west side or oilfield produced water, and make clean “new” irrigation water.  It’s true, there are ways to clean even the worst water.  … Each has its pros and cons, but two big questions always remain: What about the waste? What’s the energy cost? … ”  Continue reading at SJV Water here: Price of reclaimed water still too high for ag

Sierra Ryan is a water resources planner with the County of Santa Cruz.  In this presentation from the Groundwater Resources Association‘s 2019 Western Groundwater Congress, Ms. Ryan tells the story of how the Santa Cruz Mid-County Groundwater Agency balanced the various perspectives, authorities, and interpretations of the DWR regulations in writing the portion of their Groundwater Sustainability Plan that pertained to the depletion of interconnected surface water (sustainability indicator or undesirable result #6). “I promise you that it was not as simple as we thought it was to begin with, so for those of you in the medium and high priority basins that have the 2022 deadlines, I hope you’re thinking about this now,” Ms. Ryan advised. Click here to read this article at Maven’s Notebook.

Anna Schiller writes,

“I wasn’t expecting to see egrets, herons and pelicans on my first trip to the San Joaquin Valley — a region in the southern part of California’s Central Valley known for its impressive agricultural production and scorching summer heat. I didn’t find these birds at one of the valley’s few wildlife refuges, but at a groundwater recharge facility designed to spread and infiltrate surface water into the ground below.

Recharge basins are becoming increasingly popular in overdrafted regions in California, where water managers are seeking solutions to balance groundwater supply and demand to comply with the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). … ”

Continue reading at the Environmental Defense Fund’s Growing Returns blog.

David Orth is the principal of New Current Water and Land, which offers strategic planning, program implementation, and water resource development services.  At the California Irrigation Institute’s 2020 Annual Conference, he gave his observations on how implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) is progressing, having watched Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) form and develop their Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs) since the passage of the SGMA in 2014.

New Current Water and Land is a small strategic planning shop that combines experience in water engineering, finance, district management, and water law to create a strategic planning platform.  Their clients are from the farming community, the investment community, and the lending community.  They also work with one environmental NGO.  Over the last several years, they have monitored over 60 GSAs on behalf on that client base in over 40 subbasins, including about 15 of the 21 subbasins that are considered critically overdrafted.

“Through the course of that, we’ve provided a general risk assessment for our clients by area so they can understand where they really need to pay attention as GSPs are developed in the policy engagement arena,” he said.  “Then we extrapolated that into long-term forecasting of what individual ranch water budgets are going to look like upon full implementation of SGMA.  This has assisted our ag clients in making decisions about redevelopment or acquisition or disposition in how to deal with the new variable that SGMA creates.”

Click here to read this article at Maven’s Notebook.

Guest commentary by Geoff Vanden Heuvel, Director of Regulatory and Economic Affairs, Milk Producers Council:

“I remember being surprised when attending a local Groundwater Sustainability Agency meeting and I first saw a schematic that visually depicted the various levels of groundwater underneath one of the Central Valley’s numerous subbasins. There was a horizontal line going across the chart that said “base of freshwater”.  Beneath the freshwater line there was another line labeled “top of basement”.  I asked the subbasin hydrologist about what occupied the space between those lines and he explained that it was ancient salt water that occupied the lowest depths of the aquifer.  He said a study done decades ago had identified that the salt water was there, but they were now guessing about exactly where, because other than that one study done many years ago, no one had a reason to drill down into it to attempt to characterize it.  Why does this matter? If you are going to estimate how much fresh water is contained in a groundwater basin, you need to know how deep it is.

This story is just one example of what has been going on in the Central Valley over the past few years since the adoption of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) by California in 2014. … ”

Click here to continue reading this guest commentary at Maven’s Notebook.

Study: Agricultural water use accounting provides path for surface water use solutions:

“Agricultural water demands can conflict with habitat needs in many North Coast watersheds. Understanding different water use patterns can help reduce conflict over limited supplies.

We measured on-farm crop water use and conducted grower interviews to estimate the agricultural water demand in the upper Russian River and Navarro River watersheds. Annual agricultural water demand was less than 11% in the Russian River, and 2% in Navarro River, of the total annual discharge in each watershed. However, because demands are concentrated in the dry season when instream flows are at a minimum, these relatively small amounts can represent a significant constraint to stream habitat conditions.

We have shared our study results in broad basin and community water resource planning efforts, including flow management of the Russian and Navarro rivers and implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in the Ukiah Basin.

Findings and recommendations from this study have influenced on-the-ground solutions to meet water demand in these watersheds, including construction of off-stream wintertime storage capacity to replace summertime stream diversions, and use of a municipal recycled water conveyance system as a replacement for summer diversions.”

Read the study from California Agriculture here: Study: Agricultural water use accounting provides path for surface water use solutions

From the Department of Water Resources:

California’s climate is the most variable of any state, historically swinging from dry to flood conditions with climate change intensifying these swings. Although three of the last four water years have been above normal with 2017 and 2019 standing out as some of the wettest on record, the last decade has had a majority of the years below normal precipitation and include the timeframe of the state’s most recent drought.

Although Spring 2019 groundwater levels have mostly recovered from the past one to three years, they have not fully recovered to pre-drought conditions throughout the state as shown in the five- and 10-year time periods. At this time, there is insufficient data coverage to determine the long-term effects of the drought in some subbasins throughout the state; however, since CASGEM reporting requirements began in 2011, statewide data coverage has improved in most areas except for data gaps in Tulare, Kern, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Imperial counties.

Click here to read the full report.

Water Wrights provides coverage from Central Valley water meetings, primarily in the San Joaquin Valley.

MEETING COVERAGE

• Madera Irrigation District March 17, 2020
• Westlands Grower Meeting March 17, 2020
• Buena Vista Water Storage District March 18, 2020
• Madera Sub Basin Loses $500,000 Due to New Stone GSA

COMMENTARY

• Not All Wells Are Created Equal March 16, 2020
• When is Overdraft Not Overdraft—in a Drought? March 20, 2020

Read all articles at WaterWrights.net.