While expensive solutions like new reservoirs and seawater desalination grab attention, California communities are quietly building up their capacity to clean stormwater and wastewater for reuse for irrigation, industry and, yes, drinking water too. Continue readingIn times of scarcity, California’s best new source of water? Reuse.
Tag: SGMA
New agencies find making sustainability plans is hard, but easier than persuading growers to accept them.Continue readingA simmering revolt against groundwater cutbacks in California
Three months after the first market trades of California water futures, a conversation about economic forces and an essential material for life.Continue readingCalifornia Water on the Market: Q&A with Barton “Buzz” Thompson
Farmers, large and small, are beginning to grapple with what the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act means for them. Many expect to see cutbacks on pumping once the program is fully implemented in 2040.Continue readingSmall Farmers Wait for California’s Groundwater Hammer to Fall
With new rules coming into effect, farmers and municipalities using groundwater must either find more water to support the aquifers or take cropland out of use. To ease the pain, engineers are looking to harness an unconventional and unwieldy source of water: the torrential storms that sometimes blast across the Pacific Ocean and soak California. Continue readingPutting a Tempest into a Teapot: Can California Better Use Winter Storms to Refill its Aquifers?
New rules and new technology are giving farmers and managers a better look at groundwater supplies.Continue readingAs California’s Groundwater Free-for-All Ends, Gauging What’s Left
Like the topsoil, structures built 40 years ago to contain floodwaters are cracking, too.Continue readingTo Save Crops, Farmers Took Groundwater. Then the Land Sank
A vineyard in Paso Robles. Mattyshack via Flickr By Felicity Barringer A hidden treasure, groundwater has long sustained agriculture through California’s cycles of drought. Decades ago, state water officials started researching the geological formations that hold groundwater. By the 1950s, hydrogeologists had created an atlas showing the boundaries of more than 500 groundwater basins or…Continue readingTo Manage Groundwater, California Must First Get Basin Boundaries Right
