So here we are in the middle of yet another recording breaking hot summer following a record breaking lack of winter/spring rain. I live a few miles north of Sacramento, California on the western edge of the Sacramento Valley. My house is about five miles north of the largest town in the area (with a population of less than 20 people). The closest “real” town with a population of around 60,000 is 12 miles to the south. I am surrounded on all sides by tens of thousands of acres of new almond trees. Last week our well stopped producing water, the water table had fallen below the level of the pump.

“Normally” the water table stays at around 90 feet deep. Since my pump is located 150 feet down, there is normally plenty of water above it to provide the water that we need for domestic purposes and to maintain a nice yard and small vegetable garden. However, the water table is now at 150 so our pump was trying to suck air instead of water. Not a good thing! This is the sort of thing that really gets my mind to working, wondering what is going to happen next. Do we drill a new well in the hopes of finding more water, do we try to “fix” the well we have, and if so how long with that last? Do we leave for a few months in the hopes of rains returning next year? Do we order up a big water tank that we can fill by trucking water in? What just happened to the value of our property – did we just lose the investment in our home? Do we stop watering our yard in the hopes that the water table will come up a little?

And then come all of the questions about why is this happening. Clearly the lack of rain has had a major impact. If there is no rain to recharge the aquifer it will drop, whether we use it or not. Maybe the eight nearby houses on 30 acre “subdivision” (I live on a piece of land that was subdivided into 5 acre plots 100 years ago) are using too much water and that is drawing down the water table. Or maybe the 6 new 500 HP pumps within 1/4 miles installed to irrigate the millions of new almond trees are having an impact. Maybe the 3000 HP worth of new irrigation pumps that run 24/7 are taking more water than is available. Our neighbor has stopped watering his lawn because he thinks that might help. I suppose a 2 HP pump running 30 minutes a day might be the problem, but somehow I doubt it when compared to the 3000 HP of pumps running twenty four hours a day. When I consider how much that pump removes as opposed to how much the orchards use, it feels like he is trying to stop a forest fire by peeing into it.

Then the question comes about how can it be legal for the farmers to do such a thing? That is one of the beautiful things about California, while we are drought prone, and we have an extremely limited water supply, there are almost no regulations on water use (except in cities where they limit the times and days that lawns can be watered). For example, if your property happens to border a river (such as the Sacramento River), you get what is called riperian rights – meaning that you can pump as much water out of the river as you like, without any regulations, monitoring, or cost (beyond your pumping costs). The same holds true for the big wells near my house. The assumption is that they “own” all of the water under the property and can use it however they want. There is no monitoring of use, no regulations on its use, and no cost other than pumping expenses. The laws ignore the fact that they are really drinking out of the middle of an underground lake that is shared by all. The implicit assumption is that you can pump a square hole directly below the property lines in the middle of the lake and the rest of the lake water level will remain unchanged.

An interesting feature of our local water situation is that we have two aquifers. One is located at about 100 to 500 feet deep. It is slowly recharged by rain water during wet years. I don’t know if the water flows like a river, or is stationary like a lake. In any case, it is renewable water and if managed properly represents a sustainable resource. The few homes in the area, and the “old” style farming (row crops, alfalfa, dry wheat, small orchards) drew from this water supply. However, there is another deeper aquifer starting at about 1000 feet deep. It has ancient water in it, water that literally came from Montana 12,000 years ago when the glaciers melted. The two water supplies are separated by 500 feet or so of hard rock that prevents them from interacting. There is no recharge into this lower aquifer, and since the ground compresses as the water is removed, it is not possible to recharge it artificially pumping river water into the ground. It is NOT sustainable, and in fact is being mined by the farmers which IS regulated and is illegal, but since there is no monitoring there is no “proof” that is happening (even though the State hydrologists know all about it and are tracking the impacts). The story we were told was that they were only using water out of the “wasted” ancient resource. The well drillers tell a very different story, they are drawing water from wherever they can find it, including both aquifers. It is much less expensive to pump from the shallow aquifer, so they do that as much as possible.

Most of the big new pumps are pumping from that supply, rapidly depleting the ancient supply and dropping the ground level in this area by about a foot a year from what is called “subsidence.” It is expected that the water in this aquifer will be depleted in another six or seven years, at which point the orchards will die and be torn out of the ground, the “backup” supply of deeper water will be depleted, and the ground level will be much lower resulting in increased risks from the periodic floods that visit this location. Caltrans is concerned that the subsidence will damage the freeway and the overpasses, costing hundreds of millions of dollars to repair. How can this be the case you ask? How can farmer afford to plant millions of trees knowing full well that they are going to deplete the water, resulting in their trees all dying. It is easy, all that they want to do is keep them going long enough to make a giant profit by invading a shared but unregulated resource. After that the trees will be gone, the leases will have run out and the investors can move along to a new location. This recently happened in the section of the San Joaquin Valley to the south. About 25 years ago they planted millions of almond and other nut trees. The farmers harvested them to great profit for a few years until the water ran out, then the investors left the area with ruined homes and worthless agricultural land because of the lack of water. Not only that, but they left behind damage to critical infrastructure due to subsidence that will cost the government many billions of dollars to repair, while vastly increasing the risk from floods because of the lowering of the surface of the land.

So goes the water wars in California. The State implemented a need for local communities to develop water regulations. They were given ten years to think about thinking about regulations, and an additional ten years to think about the regulations and a final ten years to write the regulations. The first ten year period is up, now they can start to think about how they might create regulations. I guess this is better than never, but it is also a lot of the reason for the push into put in millions of new trees ASAP. If the farmers wait too long, then the free water will no longer be quite so free. It is important to get ever last drop before regulations are created to manage the water supply.

Oh yes, my situation is temporarily past the critical stage. I call an well company that came out and dropped the pump 84 feet further down the pipe. Luckily my well was drilled 300 feet deep so this is possible. Several of my neighbors aren’t so lucky – they are going to drill new wells. There is a one year backlog before the drilling companies can get to them – they are too busy drilling more very large, deep wells for the new almond orchards that keep getting planted. If the orchards fail it isn’t a problem, the government will help them out with disaster relief to cover their costs.