The Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) has released new findings from an in-depth survey of recharge efforts last year. A parade of winter storms in that time led to flooded farm towns, the return of a phantom lake and an unprecedented level of activity to capture and store as much floodwater as possible in the San Joaquin Valley.
“2023 was a banner year,” said Steven Springhorn, an engineering geologist at the Department of Water Resources, during a PPIC discussion last week on recharge efforts. “That wasn't just a moment in time, it was a decade's worth of hard work.”
The total amount recharged across the valley added up to about 7.6 million acre-feet, reflecting a 17% jump since PPIC last surveyed water managers in 2017, a similar water year, according to Associate Center Director Caity Peterson.
Peterson estimated at least 3.5 million acre-feet could have been recharged and the state and federal water systems could have exported another four million acre-feet.
“Clearly more could have been done,” she said.
The report lists several recommendations to scale up the projects further, such as clarifying when and how much can be diverted and to consider downstream impacts, overcoming permitting barriers and building more flexibility into regulations.
On-farm recharge nearly doubled over the timespan, though it still accounts for less than 10% of the overall volume.
“In just the last six years, it feels like this has moved from an experimental approach to much more the mainstream,” said Peterson. “There's a lot of interest in this in places where just a few years ago it would have been a nonstarter.”
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Growers cited fewer technical difficulties, such as incompatible irrigation systems, and shared less concern over reducing crop yields. Peterson found a need to assist growers with implementing recharge practices and to improve tracking and accounting for the projects. Farmers have been eager to embrace recharge but want credit for it, such as an increased pumping allowance or lower fees, and that concern rose to the surface in the survey.
“We had people who were very, very eager to take water,” said Stephanie Anagnoson, who directs the Madera County Department of Water and Natural Resources. “One thing that seemed really different is that people used to think recharge could only be done with grapes. This time we saw water going on almonds and pistachio trees.”
Jeevan Muhar, a manager at the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District, noted an uptick with recharge on fallowed farmland and found a strong response with incentivizing growers at $40 per acre-foot. The district continues to expand the projects to groundwater-dependent farms and build out pipelines to supply those properties with excess water. It imported an additional 35,000 acre-feet last year, setting a record.
According to Jon Reiter, who runs McConnell Farms and works in solar development, two key elements are behind the acceleration in on-farm recharge. He noted that more local agencies have developed incentive programs. The Westlands Water District, for example, established a program after a new board took over in 2022 and swapped out the general manager. The district went from zero to 400,000 acre-feet of recharge in a single year—“a huge success,” said Reiter. He also pointed to a steadily evolving market for purchasing water to recharge in wet years and pump in dry ones.
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