State works to better adapt to extreme dry, wet periods
California Farm Bureau Federation
As California farmers struggle through impacts of rapid swings between intense drought and severe deluge, the state’s water chief emphasized the need to better manage flood flows and groundwater during wet periods to improve water supply reliability during dry periods.
Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, highlighted some of the work already underway during the state’s weather whiplash in recent years. She also outlined longterm plans to help the state adapt more broadly.
Nemeth spoke during the California Farm Bureau Capital Ag Conference in Sacramento last week. (See related story, Page 1.)
With reduced surface water supplies during the drought and implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act limiting groundwater pumping, California farms faced “dual pressures” that threatened their survival, Nemeth said. She also acknowledged that investments in water infrastructure— which farmers have urged for years—have been slow coming.
The atmospheric river storms that pummeled California in 2023 provided relief from the multiyear drought. The big rain events also tested how the state responded as it went from the driest three years on record to the wettest three weeks on record, Nemeth said.
Working with the state Water Resources Control Board and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, DWR managed to divert floodwaters and start recharging groundwater basins. Nemeth said the department learned a lot about how to streamline permitting and used tools such as satellite data to map out the best places for groundwater recharge. As a result, the San Joaquin Valley saw “incredible rebound of groundwater basins,” with 300,000 acre-feet of groundwater recharged on the west side, she noted.
“It was a really important moment for us to roll up our sleeves and work directly with growers in the irrigation districts and flood agencies to figure out how do we get this project in the ground out on this timeline to take advantage of these storm events,” Nemeth said.
Impacts of climate change and rising temperatures mean more of the state’s water supply will come as rain rather than snow, with Southern California experiencing drier conditions over time and big pulses of water coming from more tropical storms, she said. The state’s challenge, she added, is capturing that water with its existing water infrastructure and technology.