Region: Cuyama Basin

From KCBX:

“In 2014, state lawmakers passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act or SGMA. It changed everything about how groundwater will be used in the future. But will it work?

Jeremy P. Jacobs is a reporter for E&E News. That’s a non-partisan news service based in Washington DC. Jacobs is one of the news service’s California-based reporters. He recently took a close look at the Cuyama Valley, on the Central Coast. Jacobs wrote about what he found in an article that appeared in Greenwire, a publication of E&E News. His article is part of a series called “When The Wells Run Dry.”

KCBX News spoke with Jacobs about his reporting in the Cuyama Valley, and started by asking him how he got interested in groundwater—and in that particular place. … “

Continue reading at KCBX by clicking here.

From E&E News:

When Roberta Jaffe and her husband planted their small vineyard, one factor trumped all others: groundwater.

Knowing that this isolated valley in south-central California relies on a depleted aquifer, the couple “dry farmed” their Condor’s Hope Ranch, using 5 percent or less of the water required by a conventional vineyard.

“For us, it is very much about farming in a way that is harmonious with the environment,” Jaffe said. “This is what we see as what this environment can handle.”

So Jaffe was alarmed when Harvard University’s endowment fund installed an 850-acre conventional vineyard just down the road in 2014 — and drilled 14 wells.

Continue reading at E&E News by clicking here.