California Drought

[jyoutz]

In most cities, you can't put in a well. In rural areas, yes people have wells, but many would like to have city water.

Why? Because then it is someone else's responsibility to make sure that there is enough. Lots of wells have gone dry, and water tables are much lower than they used to be.

A few years ago, California voted to manage underground water with a goal is sustainable water use. It is not yet fully enacted, but in principle the state is divided into water management districts that have to plan and regulate the water usage within their districts.

Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)

In 2014, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. signed three bills known collectively as the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) . For the first time in its history, California had a framework for sustainable, groundwater management - “management and use of groundwater in a manner that can be...

water.ca.gov

As currently structured, it regulates larger users, and exempts household sized wells.

No definite plans yet about restoring aquifer levels, and managing contamination. Step one is stopping the depletion of the aquifers.

All the best,

Peter

Are they pumping excess storm water to recharge the aquifers?

 

[ponytug]

Not directly, no.

Aquifer recharge by wells is, I think, not straightforward. Yes, it gets water to the aquifer quickly, but it gets there without any natural filtration of soils, wetlands and lakes. So a simple well plugs pretty quickly with silt, not to mention microbes and trace chemicals. It is much easier to add things like weirs, retention ponds, and wetlands that facilitate both natural infiltration as well as biological remediation (purification) of the water. Denver has done a bunch of work and requires on site capture of runoff to improve ground water recharge.

There is a trend in the Central Valley for going back to flood irrigation in times rainfall. Some farmers have been doing it there for thirty years with positive results, but it can affect crops, and is perhaps best suited to more established orchards.

Los Angeles recycles quite a bit of their water by aquifer reinjection, but the water for well injection is highly purified: micro-filtered, reverse osmosis purified, UV treated, and ozonated before injection. Some of the injection wells are on the coast to help prevent salt water intrusion into the aquifer. Slightly less treated water used for landscape irrigation, which also indirectly recharges the aquifers. Something like 80% of the water used to irrigate trees ends up back in the Los Angeles aquifer.

Recycled Water General Information

Los Angeles has long relied on water imported from hundreds of miles away to support its water demands, but environmental programs, court rulings, periods of dry weather and low snowpack, and climate change have threatened the reliability of these imported supplies.

www.ladwp.com

The latest plant:

Work Begins on $500M Advanced Water Treatment Facility for Los Angeles

When completed, the facility will produce 15 million gallons per day of purified water suitable for groundwater replenishment in the Los Angeles area.

www.enr.com

Personally, I try to reduce hardscapes and try to have runoff take low slope paths to maximize infiltration. For most places on the ranch the clay soils don't exactly facilitate ground water acceptance. After a couple days of rain, the ground squirrel burrows are bubbling springs. I have a few places that can take 20gpm or so and have it underground in thirty feet or so. I am always mesmerized watching it happen. I admit to feeling a bit like a miser counting his gold watching the water disappear underground. The water there seems to feed the oaks, and there is a spring a couple hundred feet downhill from the sink and I always wonder if they are hydrologically linked.

All the best,

Peter

 

[California]

Are they pumping excess storm water to recharge the aquifers?

Not that I know of.

Areas like Yolo Bypass get flooded when the rivers are running high but I don't think water percolates down fast enough to capture it before it runs to the ocean. Too many impervious layers between surface and aquifer. As I understand it aquifers aren't replenished mostly from surfaced water above, but rather from far upstream. But someone who knows more might explain it better. [ I see ponytug posted while I was drafting this. Listen to him.]

There is one project under development that is unique: Sites Reservoir. It doesn't have enough upstream watershed to put much water in it, rather, water is to be pumped uphill into it from the Sacramento River when that is running at full capacity. It's the last site in the Sacramento River drainage with geography suitable for a reservoir, everything else is already dammed.

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sitesproject.org

About Sites Reservoir

About Sites Reservoir

sitesproject.org

This reservoir on the Sacramento River has been planned for decades. What’s taking so long?

The Sites Reservoir — a $4.4 billion system to add dams and store more water to be sent south — is still years away from completion.

calmatters.org

Critique: Sites Reservoir project is not the water solution California needs

 

[jyoutz]

Not that I know of.

Areas like Yolo Bypass get flooded when the rivers are running high but I don't think water percolates down fast enough to capture it before it runs to the ocean. Too many impervious layers between surface and aquifer. As I understand it aquifers aren't replenished mostly from surfaced water above, but rather from far upstream. But someone who knows more might explain it better. [ I see ponytug posted while I was drafting this. Listen to him.]

There is one project under development that is unique: Sites Reservoir. It doesn't have enough upstream watershed to put much water in it, rather, water is to be pumped uphill into it from the Sacramento River when that is running at full capacity. It's the last site in the Sacramento River drainage with geography suitable for a reservoir, everything else is already dammed.

Promotional stuff. Your Tax Dollars At Work!

Home

Home

sitesproject.org

About Sites Reservoir

About Sites Reservoir

sitesproject.org

This reservoir on the Sacramento River has been planned for decades. What’s taking so long?

The Sites Reservoir — a $4.4 billion system to add dams and store more water to be sent south — is still years away from completion.

calmatters.org

Critique: Sites Reservoir project is not the water solution California needs

I’m not a hydrologist, but I’m aware of groundwater recharge programs in western Arizona where they drill injection wells and pump flood water into the aquifers. There are also weir and drainage basins in New Mexico where flood water is allowed to pool and percolate into the Rio Grande groundwater basin.

 

[ultrarunner]

Some really heavy clouds bursts at times in Oakland with 80mph wind gusts…

Took down the flag as the pole was starting to flex like a fishing pole.

Have not walked the hillside to look for downed trees and or slides or washouts.

 

[NoTrespassing]

Shasta is 40 ft. higher than it was on this date in 2023. Are they releasing water there also?

 

[orezok]

Here in the desert area municipalities are requiring projects to build water retention basins to improve water percolation and conservation.

It accomplishes 2 things. Improves the aquifer and reduces storm damage due to runoff. Due to minimal annual rainfall, most water is handled by surface rather than storm drainage systems. They are not designed to handle a large storms typically.

The cost is minimal, but developers complain about the loss of buildable area. Bu they save by not installing storm drainage systems.

 

[California]

We're safe and warm here at home in the Central Valley, Sacramento region. Like Ultrarunner noted in Oakland there has been severe wind, also heavy rain but just a normal winter storm. Not the disaster that SoCal is experiencing.

I got a robocall last night from PGE saying electricity at the ranch (apple orchard), north of SF, may not be restored for another 24 hours. Their online map shows miles, whole regions, down.

That outage is confirmed personally - my critter-cams at the ranch have been down since yesterday afternoon. Before the cams went down the wildlife looked miserable with soggy racoons, foxes, bobcat, scurrying along when the rain let up a little. Pobrecitos.

Added: pix from just before the deluge.

 

[Gen2]

We had quite a wind event here just east of Sacramento yesterday with 60+mph winds.
Power was out for more than 6 hours, but was back on by 10 PM. I had some fence sections blow out; had 2 limbs snapped off my Eucalyptus tree, and 2 more off a nearby Modesto Ash.
Fortunately, I had just finished building a boom pole for my Ford 601, and it worked like a champ to relocate the downed branches.

 

[CliffordK]

Are they pumping excess storm water to recharge the aquifers?

There apparently is an effort to deliberately flood fields to allow water to soak back in.

Flooding farms in winter may help replenish groundwater – from the University of California

By Diane Nelson, UC Davis Researchers at the University of California, Davis, …

plantingseedsblog.cdfa.ca.gov

California farmers flood fields to boost groundwater basin

With water gushing through California’s rivers, some farmers have started devoting a portion of their land to capture these flows and let them seep into the ground.

apnews.com

How Farmers Used California's Floods to Revive Underground Aquifers

Farms designed to recharge groundwater are answering the state's existential question: How do you make sure devastating rainfall doesn't go to waste?

reasonstobecheerful.world

There also is a hunt for glacial valleys (paleo valleys) with sandy/rocky soil well suited for absorbing a lot of water quickly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/opinion/california-flood-atmospheric-river-drought.html