State needs leadership on groundwater
In 2014, the California Farm Federation warned of “huge long-term economic impacts” if Gov. Jerry Brown signed the package of bills that comprised the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and put groundwater under state regulation for the first time in California history.
Five years later, the Public Policy Institute of California released an analysis that said the new limits on groundwater pumping could force the farmers of the San Joaquin Valley to take up to 750,000 acres out of production.
It’s happening now. Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley are idling so many thousands of acres that the region is now facing an issue of dust control.
Land that has been farmed for a century is being fallowed — plowed under and left unplanted. Productive orchards are becoming empty lots as tens of thousands of mature trees are being bulldozed for lack of water to keep them alive.
California has regulated surface water in rivers and streams since 1914. The federal government constructed the Central Valley Project in the 1930s, a multi-purpose network of dams, reservoirs, canals and other facilities that provided water to irrigate the rich farmland that has yielded a $50 billion per year industry in California.
But this year, as the state faced drought conditions, thousands of farmers in the Central Valley were told to expect water cutoffs. While many farmers had survived previous droughts by pumping groundwater, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act has now removed that lifeline.
Throughout the state’s history, land ownership came with groundwater rights; no regulatory agency could prevent a farmer from drilling into an aquifer. During the drought that began in 2011, aquifers became overdrawn as farmers pumped groundwater to save trees and protect crops, making up for the loss of surface water that regulators were directing toward environmental uses such as the protection of species.
Now, under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, more than 250 groundwater sustainability agencies manage California’s hundreds of underground basins, and groundwater pumping is strictly regulated and limited. The 2014 law gave these new agencies until January 31, 2020, to file plans to make groundwater resources “sustainable” by 2040. In this case, making groundwater sustainable means removing farmland from production, perhaps permanently.
The loss of farmland means the loss of jobs. There are also environmental hazards associated with this new dust bowl, including pests, invasive weeds and health effects from particulate matter in the air.
The current state budget includes $50 million for a new program to “repurpose” farmland. Possible uses include groundwater recharge basins, solar farms and wildlife habitat for endangered species such as the giant kangaroo rat and the blunt-nosed leopard lizard. That’s no consolation to farmers and farm workers.
This didn’t have to happen. In 2014, shortly after Brown signed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, voters approved a $7.5 billion water bond that included more than $2 billion for water storage projects that would have helped to ease current drought conditions, that is, if they had ever been built.
Although climate change is worsening the state’s droughts, California’s climate has always bounced between wet years and dry years. That’s why then-revolutionary water storage infrastructure was built in the 1930s, why the State Water Project was built in the 1960s, and why voters approved funding for more water storage in 2014.
Conservation alone is not a solution to the state’s water needs. Leadership is also required.
The loss of farmland means the loss of jobs. There are also environmental hazards associated with this new dust bowl, including pests, invasive weeds and health effects from particulate matter in the air.