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Arcadia Weekly Apr 10, 2015
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-Photo Courtesy California Department of Water Resources
Groundwater Drilling Damaging CA’s Future
By Terry Miller
Even as the worst drought in decades overwhelms California, and its cities face mandatory cuts in water use, crops like oranges, tomatoes and almonds, eager for a constant supply of water, manage to get into stores nationwide, despite the dearth of the state’s longest drought in history.
According to an article in the New York Times on the weekend, how California farmers have pulled off that feat is a case study in “the unwise use of natural resources, many experts say.”
According to the Times, farmers are drilling wells at “a feverish pace and pumping billions of gallons of water from the ground, depleting a resource that was critically endangered even before the drought, now in its fourth year, began.”
The article continues … “California has pushed harder than any other state to adapt to a changing climate, but scientists warn that improving its management of precious groundwater supplies will shape whether it can continue to supply more than half the nation’s fruits and vegetables on a hotter planet.”
In some places, water tables have dropped 50 feet or more in just a few years. With less underground water to buoy it, the land surface is sinking as much as a foot a year in spots, causing roads to buckle and bridges to crack. Shallow wells have run dry, depriving several poor communities of water.
Scientists say some of the underground water-storing formations so critical to California’s future — typically, saturated layers of sand or clay — are being permanently damaged by the excess pumping, and will never again store as much water as farmers are pulling out.
“Climate conditions have exposed our house of cards,” said Jay Famiglietti, a NASA scientist in Pasadena who studies water supplies in California and elsewhere. “The withdrawals far outstrip the replenishment. We can’t keep doing this,” he warns.
California set a new “low water” mark with its early-April snowpack measurement. The statewide electronic reading of the snowpack’s water content stood at 5 percent of the April 1st average. Today’s content was only 1.4 inches, or 5 percent of the 28-inch average. The lowest previous reading since 1950 was 25 percent of average, so Water Year 2015 is the driest winter in California’s written record.
Up in the Sierra Nevada, the media-oriented snow survey at the traditional Phillips Station snow course just off Highway 50 90 miles east of Sacramento found no snow whatsoever April 1. At 6,800 feet, Phillips should be covered in snow this time of year as the snowpack reaches its peak. The average depth at Phillips since surveys began there in 1941 had been 66.5 inches, so to find not a flake in the meadow was remarkable and dismaying in equal parts.
Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. attended the survey for the first time in his four terms as the state’s chief executive. “We’re standing on dried grass,” he said, “and we should be standing in five feet of snow. We’re in an historic drought, and that demands unprecedented action.”
The Governor issued an executive order last week mandating substantial water reduction across the state. “As Californians, we have to pull together and save water in every way we can,” he said. “This executive order which I signed today, it’s long, it covers a number of different details. In fact, I’ve never seen one quite like it before.”
“People should realize,” he continued, “we’re in a new era. The idea of your nice little green grass getting lots of water every day – that could be a thing of the past.”
Elsewhere, California’s major reservoirs such as Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville continue to see their storage shrink each day as a percentage of their daily averages measured over the past several decades. Water continues to run into the reservoirs, but because precipitation is so far below normal, the daily averages are running ahead of the reservoirs’ ability to keep up. Shasta and Oroville now are at 73 percent and 67 percent of their historic averages respectively at the beginning of April.
Less than two inches of rain have fallen since early February on the eight Northern California stations that are tracked continuously. Although their index was above its historic average until mid-January, it now is only 76 percent of normal in early April. The San Joaquin and Tulare Basin readings are much worse – just 41 percent and 42 percent of normal respectively.
With California’s traditional wet season already over and no significant rainfall in the forecast, the drought is now firmly rooted in its fourth consecutive year.
