<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:garamond, new york, times, serif;font-size:16px"><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12722" dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.redding.com/story/opinion/columnists/tom-elias/2017/04/17/big-water-year-leaves-dearth-information/100570580/" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12871" class="">http://www.redding.com/story/opinion/columnists/tom-elias/2017/04/17/big-water-year-leaves-dearth-information/100570580/</a><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12880"><br></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12952"><br></div><section style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12841"><h1 itemprop="headline" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 32px; line-height: 34px; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 20px; padding-left: 70px;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12842">Big water year leaves dearth of information</h1></section><section style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12843"><div style="border: 1px solid rgb(230, 230, 230); border-top-left-radius: 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px; border-bottom-left-radius: 3px; margin: 20px 0px 23px 70px; width: 878px;" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12844"><span style="display: inline-block; font-size: 12px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 14px; margin: 6px 0px 5px; padding: 2px 10px; position: relative;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12845">Thomas Elias</span><span style="display: inline-block; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14px; margin: 6px 0px 5px; padding: 2px 10px; position: relative; border: 0px; color: rgb(153, 153, 153);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12846">11:12 a.m. PT April 17, 2017</span></div></section><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12769">In this remarkable water year, which ended more than five years of severe drought in California, there are still plenty of noteworthy water questions to contemplate and act upon.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12770">Here’s the central one: Three years after California passed what’s often called a landmark groundwater regulation law, no one knows how much under-surface water remains accessible to wells and no one has a clue to how much replenishment the state’s supplies actually got from last winter’s massive storms.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12771">It’s easy to see that once-depleted reservoirs are back at peak levels, again drowning abandoned towns, buildings, corrals and other structures sacrificed decades ago to the need for water storage.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12772">But groundwater remains a mystery.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12773">Things may not be quite as mysterious as years ago, but one thing for sure: supposed new information the state now possesses about groundwater basins is essentially common sense stuff understood long ago by anyone with even a modicum of knowledge about California rainfall, lakes and rivers.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12774">Example A is a somewhat breathless mid-winter report from the California Department of Water Resources called “Water Available for Replenishment,” showed demand for local water and imports from other regions is highest in the Tulare Basin of the southern San Joaquin Valley.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12775">The same report says “runoff, natural recharge and outflow are highest on the North Coast.” And we were told the estimated water available for replenishing groundwater basins is highest in the Sacramento River region (about 640,000 acre feet a year, enough to satisfy the needs of 1.4 million families).</div><div style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial, sans-serif;" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12776"></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12777">This is all the stuff of common-sense: Virtually no one familiar with California’s water world doesn’t know that farms in the Tulare Basin consume a lot of water, both from the Central Valley Project and from wells. Who doesn’t know it typically rains more on the North Coast than anywhere else in the state? And who doesn’t know the Sacramento River watershed contains some of California’s largest reservoirs, from which water could be shifted to replenish aquifers?</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12778">So this was essentially a useless report, telling interested Californians little they didn’t already know. There is still no way to tell how much water remains in easily reachable aquifers around the state. For example, no one has a clue how much water lies in most California underground lakes. We do, for example, know golf courses in the Coachella Valley portion of Riverside County, including Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage and the aptly named Indian Wells, always remained green even as the state Capitol lawn and many others went brown in the drought.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12779">Drought or not, the vast underground lake beneath the Coachella Valley keeps water shortages there at bay year after year. Plus, much of the water sprayed onto the valley’s myriad greens and fairways eventually filters back down to the aquifer.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12780">Far more important would be to know the extent of aquifers and their winter replenishment in the Central Valley. During the drought, farmers spent heavily to deepen wells and reach new, lower levels of underground supplies, but no one had the foggiest notion how long that could persist. Winter storms at least partially replenished supplies, but it’s still anyone’s guess how much water rests there or how long it might last.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12781">Water meters, reported Leon Szeptycki, executive director of Stanford University’s Water in the West program, could help a bit with this. He told a university magazine that “If everyone had a meter on their well and you knew how much everyone was using, you could sort of calculate everyone’s contribution to aquifer depletion. But if you don’t know any of those things, they just become things to fight about.”</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12782">That’s pretty much where we are today, more than 12 years before the new state law’s eventual deadline for controlling and measuring use of groundwater as thoroughly as surface water is managed now.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12783">The bottom line: We know that after a winter of heavy rain, there is no more drought in California. Even Gov. Jerry Brown admitted that.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12784">We also know at least some Californians want controls on groundwater use, but that’s many years off. All of which means that we know startlingly little more now than before the groundwater law passed three years ago, and that’s a crying shame.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 60px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12785"><em id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12786">Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.</em></div><div class="signature" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12724"><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1492543531216_12727"><br></div></div></div></body></html>