California Should Speed Up Groundwater Conservation

Rebecca Nelson

Rebecca Nelson, a specialist in water law, is a fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Updated April 7, 2015, 6:46 AM

In response to severe cuts to surface water deliveries, many irrigators have drastically increased groundwater pumping. Even while surface water is rationed, aquifers have been unregulated and their levels are plummeting, threatening California’s water future.

Decades of regulatory inaction have left California without effective laws for controlling groundwater use: There are no centralized databases of pumpers, no water use meters and few quantified water rights.

Last year's law gives local agencies 20 years to achieve sustainable management — a timetable that must be accelerated.

But last September, the state passed legislation that requires local groundwater agencies to submit plans by 2020 to manage groundwater sustainably. The law will give those agencies new powers, including the power to regulate withdrawals, impose pumping fees and introduce voluntary land fallowing.

The drawback is that the law also gives local agencies 20 years to achieve sustainable management — a timetable that must be accelerated. To test what works, the state could implement pilot programs, and at the very least, agencies in the most critically over-drafted basins should develop plans sooner.

During Australia's worst drought, the government introduced the buying and retiring of water rights, and increased irrigation efficiency, along with protections for ecosystems. These practices could all be employed throughout the American West, and perhaps help support the economy there.

Farmers should be able to use groundwater to help cope with surface water shortages. But groundwater systems can take many years to recover from overuse and must be sustainably maintained. Unrestricted agricultural pumping effectively mortgages the future for farmers and other water users, especially in a drought with no end in sight.


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Topics: Agriculture, California, climate change, drought, global warming

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