In Northern California north of Interstate 80, the drought of the early 2020s is distant memory. Reservoirs are full and groundwater tables have risen after 3 consecutive wet winters. And with regular storms since late September giving us a big headstart on the coming winter, it very much feels like we have entered a multi-year wet period: an “anti-drought”, as it were. The last time this happened was in the late 1990s. With reservoirs full and more rain falliing, farmers rely less on groundwater at the same time that creeks and rivers are full and flowing for longer and thus replenishing acquifers.
Yet, in the halls of government and in the minds of many people, we are still in a drought crisis. And because farming uses more water than any other human activity in California, agriculture is the biggest and easiest target for policymakers seeking to bring our state’s water usage into balance with our supply.
The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act attempts to achieve that enormous goal, and since it was passed almost ten years ago, the infrastructure to accomplish it has been slowly growing: a network of local agencies, reporting to the State Water Resources Control Board and creating plans to monitor water tables and eventually enforce limits on pumping. In the areas of the state that have seen the most severe overuse of groundwater — High-Priority Watersheds — farmers have already been served with notices to reduce their water use, and thousands of acres of farmland have been fallowed and orchards abandoned. Farm bankruptcies in the San Joaquin Valley have skyrocketed.
In Yolo and Solano counties, where we farm, the watersheds are not as dramatically overdrafted. We get twice the annual rainfall or more than most areas of the San Joaquin Valley, and unlike theirs our acquifers are replenished during wet years and particularly multi-year wet cycles. For these and other reasons, we are in a lower priority SGMA designation with a slower roll-out of implementation of the law. It is highly likely that large areas of both counties will be found to be 100% “groundwater sustainable” once the required evaluation of our resources is completed. The “nuclear option” of fallowing large areas of farmland that has occurred in places like Tulare County is extremely unlikely here.
That consensus among water experts failed to convince our elected County Supervisors, though. Pushed by a small group of activists, they adopted an “Emergency Resolution” setting a moratorium in certain areas of the county on the construction of new agricultural wells as well as those replacing older, failed wells. That area included land that Terra Firma farms.
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Acquifers are a shared resource. SGMA is based on the idea that only a certain amount of water can be sustainably pumped from an acquifer without causing it to drop permanently. The regulatory mechanism that the state is using for enforcement is limiting pumping to a certain number of gallons or acre-feet per year, per acre. Every landowner in a certain acquifer would be entitled to use that much water on their property. Some groundwater districts are exploring the possibility of metering groundwater and charging for it; while this might seem like a no-brainer to you if you pay for municipal water, it’s important to remember that farmers and rural dwellers already pay for the energy to pump their water as well as the maintenance of their wells and pumps. Groundwater used by farmers is not “free” in any real sense of the word; while the media paints a picture of agriculture recklessly wasting water, the truth is far more nuanced.
Regulating the drilling of wells is entirely different matter, and is not directly addressed by SGMA. First of all, permits for wells are issued by counties, not by the state. Second, it is almost universally considered the right of a property owner to drill a well on their land unless well-drilling is prohibited on all properties in a certain area. The idea that some property owners might be allowed to have a well and their neighbors not is likely unconstitutional. Thus, counties in California rarely refuse to issue a permit for a new well, although they may put specific restrictions on the well given local concerns.
Putting the question of new wells aside, however, the idea that a landowner would not be allowed to replace an existing well that has failed is absolutely unacceptable. Wells are holes in the ground lined with pipe that is screened in certain parts of its length. They don’t last forever, and they can and do fail even if there is plenty of water in the acquifer: filling with sand or gravel, or simply collapsing when the pipes rust and fall apart. These defects tend to become more obvious during droughts, when the standing water level in a well drops.
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When farmers throughout Yolo County found out the well-drilling moratorium had passed without an exemption for replacement wells, there was immediate outrage. No one wants to replace an existing well, but wells do fail over time and most crops will die fairly quickly without irrigation. Two weeks after the ordinance was passed, 50 farmers showed up at a “Ag Roundtable” hosted by the supervisors to deliver a message: Farmers must be allowed to drill replacement wells. The following week, the Board of Supervisors met again and amended the ordinance.
While the supervisors removed the most problematic part of their well moratorium, most farmers consider the entire ordinance unnecessary and overreaching. Once SGMA is fully implemented, acquifers will be managed on a macro scale — not “one well at a time”. All farmers sharing an acquifer will be held to the same limits on how much water they can pump from their wells.
Thanks,