California promulgated an underground water law 7 years ago.But the wells are still drying and the threat continues

California promulgated an underground water law 7 years ago.But the wells are still drying and the threat continues

In summary

As the drought worsens, there are few protections, if any, for the exhausted groundwater of California.The new law granted local agencies at least 26 years, until 2040, to stop the impacts of excessive pumping.

Read this article in English.

Kelly O'Brien's drinking water well had been agonizing for days before his bomb finally exhausted during the weekend of the Fallen Day.

It was not a quiet death in O'Brien's house in Glenn's county, about 100 miles north of Sacramento.

The taps shuddered.The keys sizzle.Drinking water showed oxidized sediments.In the end, two houses, three adults, three children, two horses, four dogs and a couple of cats in their five acres of land ran out of water for their mop, showers, laundry, abbreviated and water bowls.

As the extreme drought spread throughout the state, O'Brien feared that the water under his property had sunk so much that he was out of his well.

“You say all the time,‘ Oh, please, that is something else.To be a change.That is the pump, that is anything but not being able to reach the water ‘", said O’Brien.He was worried to have to get a second mortgage to pay the thousands of dollars if his well had to drill more deeply.

Soon O'Brien learned that other wells were failing around.He learned of a northern neighbor and another from the east.The list continued to grow: a Facebook group began so that dried well owners share their problems and resources, and grew more than 665 members.

"In a way, you feel relieved not being just you," said O'Brien."However, it is really scary at the same time to think that we are not just us, they are all that surround us".

During the apogee of the last drought of the State, thousands of Californians in the central valley were left without water when their wells dried.So much water from the subsoil was pumped, mainly by the farmers, that the earth collapsed and sank up to two feet per year.In parts of the San Joaquín Valley.

Alarmed, the California Legislature in 2014 promulgated a package of new laws that aimed to stop excess pumping.

But seven years later, little has changed for Californians who depend on drinking water wells: the exhaustion of their groundwater continues.Pumping is largely without restrictions and there are few protections, if they exist.

Now, after two years of drought, reports of dry wells are getting worse and extending in many new areas, leaving more families such as O'Brien without drinking water.Despite the law, on 2,700 wells throughout the State, they are expected to dry this year and, if the drought continues, 1,000 more next year.

Call Law on Sustainable Groundwater or SGM.

Those who manage less exhausted water supplies, such as those under Glenn County, are up to 2042.

But, as expected, this drought arrived long before the safeguards of the laws: as a result, the echoes of the last drought now sprout from people's taps and hit their empty pipes.

"It feels as if we were in a place very similar to that of the last drought," said Darcy Bostic, who dare the groundwater sustainability plans in the Pacific Institute, a group of worldwater experts.“Everyone talks about how different it is and how it will take time, but people will continue to lose access to drinking water.And we really don't have a new plan to address that ".

During the last drought, the dry wells were mainly in the San Joaquín Valley, but the north of California is being very affected this time.Well, the interruptions are moving north to the Valley of Sacramento, where Glenn residents, Tehama and Colusdrought.Almost half of the measures showed that groundwater levels fell last year compared to the previous three years.

"The scope is much greater than I think we have heard before," said Joe Karkoski, deputy director of the Financial Assistance Division of the State Board of Water Resources Control."We have news of counties of those who had no news during the last drought".

Now, former state senator Fran Pavley, democrat and author of the projects that became law, says it may be time for the California Legislature and state agencies to accelerate its implementation.

"We don't know when the next drought will come.So, when this happened in 2014, I think most of us think it would probably be a long time, "said Pavley.And was it?"Apparently not."

——————

Interestatal 5 through the Sacramento Valley offers a quick view of a changing landscape.The green rice fields gun into the casual and moved view of the orchards. “¡Que crezcan los buenos tiempos!" declara un letrero que se está pelando a lo largo de la carretera hacia el condado de Glenn.

The sprinklers whistle under the hot summer sun in the orchards near O'Brien's house, but she still has no water.It has been more than a month since the bomb stopped working.

She has only had two real showers, one that costs $ 15 in a gym, and another with buckets with water from the well of a neighbor who is heated in the stove most of the days.Try to avoid outdoor work that would dirty your clothes and sweat it.

“Cada día se consumía con saber el siguiente paso sobre cómo vivir su vida sin agua", dice O’Brien.

Their dishes slowly boil in a slow cooking pot all day before O'Brien wash them at night with boiled water bottles.Without water to rinse the rags, the dust that rises from the dirt roads and is dragged inside his furniture by his two dogs.

“Simplemente se vuelve más y más grueso, y muy pronto puedes escribir tu nombre en él", dice O’Brien.

California promulgó una ley de aguas subterráneas hace 7 años. Pero los pozos todavía se están secando y la amenaza sigue

The price of life without water is accumulating.He had to buy drinking water and a hurriedly acquired storage tank, and his weekly visits to laundry cost $ 30 each.

“Todos los pequeños extras de los que realmente no puedes prescindir", dice O’Brien. “Honestamente, este es el último conjunto de ropa que tengo antes de tener que lavar la ropa".

——————

For all the great feats of California engineering to divert the flow of rivers from one part of the State to another, most of its more than 7,400 public water systems depend on the suctioned water from the soil.

For six million people, it is its only source.In a good year, groundwater constitutes approximately 40% of California water supply.

In a bad one, like this year, it approaches 60%.

Fooded by rain, snow and streams, groundwater is one of California's most precious resources.

In the dry years, when the flows of the superficial river tracks decrease, the farmers, which represent about 80% of all the groundwater used in the state, take advantage of a greater amount of the underground supply to water their dry crops.In 2015, producers pumped more than double what they did in 2005.

It is a limited store that is slowly recharges: a hydrological savings account overdraft in up to 2.5 million acres-pies throughout the state each year, according to a state groundwater report.That is enough water to supply 7.5 million homes in southern California for one year.

The Californians reported 2,600 water scanning at home until January 2019, mainly in Latin -income Latin communities in the San Joaquín Valley -a number that state officials recognize is certainly an underestimation because most people do not inform their wellsDry.

The farmers were among those who battled with an estimate of half a million unused acres of land, says Matt Angngel, a cultivator of almonds and grapes of the wood county that also drills and repairs wells and that still remembers the trauma of the last drought.I could not sleep and developed diabetes that attributes in part to stress.

For three years, desperate farmers and well owners continued to call Angels in search of help."The stress of knowing that people were going to lose their farm was overwhelming.The stress of the people who called me and said: ‘I have no water in my house’ was overwhelming ".

In O'Brien Glenn County, the Supervisors Board promulgated a drilling moratorium for new agricultural wells until the end of next June.

Farmers in the region are feeling the pain of overexploited groundwater.But they urged a more specific approach to the prohibition, only in areas that suffer a serious exhaustion.

“Este condado no existiría realmente si no fuera por la agricultura", dijo Matt Lohse, quien le dijo a la Junta de Supervisores que está orgulloso de ser un agricultor del condado de Glenn."In fact, my dad is going to have to drill a well in a new house, he is currently fighting to water ... I understand.I understand the impact on Glenn County ".

Mike Vereschagin, who cultivates almonds and plums around Orland and Artois, told Calmatters that he does not have enough surface water and that his wells are producing less during drought, so he had to start buying water from other producers and districts of irrigation. Sin él, “no tendría suficiente para regar todos mis huertos después de la cosecha, hacer parte del riego posterior a la cosecha, que es fundamental para fijar la cosecha del próximo año", dijo.

Ritta Martín, Ranchero of Sixth Generation and president of the Agricultural Office of Glenn County, is concerned with the endless cycles of California drought.

“Parece que ha habido más años secos que no, en la memoria reciente", dijo.In dry years, “groundwater cannot sustain all orchards and other irrigation crops that we have in the area.

“Da miedo pensar en ello".

——————

Driving on the road roads in his Ford F-150, O'Brien can know which of his neighbors are without water, by the plastic storage tanks that sprout from their courtyards.Point out tree rows where there was once a dairy or hay field.

O'Brien lives in the same lot on the outskirts of Orland that his parents bought at the end of the 1960s, when she was a girl.He worked as a hairdresser and waitress and raised four children, and now he lives in a mobile house in his land while his son, daughter -in -law and three grandchildren occupy the main house.

His parents moved to the Sacramento Valley from Chicago, attracted by the slowest pace of a community created by irrigated agriculture. A principios de la década de 1900, atraídos por anuncios que prometían “Agua disponible y en abundancia en todas las estaciones del año", los agricultores transformaron Condado de Glenn, contribuyendo más de $ 1 billones al año a la economía y proporcionando uno de cada tres puestos de trabajo.

However, the promise of abundant water has now become more precarious.

Specific water supplies have increasingly reliable have led to greater dependence on groundwater and less water filtering in underground deposits.Many dry wells, such as O'Brien, are grouped near Stony Creek.The stream, which penetrates the ground and replenishes groundwater in wet years, has been reduced to a drip, bordered by green slag.

O’Brien already had to lower the pump from his well once to reach the water during the last drought.But she feels relieved to know that the diagnosis this time is not as bad as she originally feared.The groundwater has sunk again below the reach of its pump, but not below the depth of its well.So she needs to lower a new bomb, not a new well.

O'Brien noticed that the problems of his well began when the nuts of nuts began to replace the hay fields.She is reluctant to point her finger in her small community, but the events illustrate the problem.The orchards in the area create a double blow: they often water with groundwater, but do not feed underground deposits as other crops do when they are flooded.

Agriculture is the largest water consumer in Glenn County, according to the county, and the orchards that produce fruits and nuts have almost doubled on the surface of 2009 to 2019.More than 650 permits for agricultural wells were issued in the last ten years, compared to 380 for homes.(It is possible that not everyone has been perforated).

“Si tuviéramos las lluvias y las nevadas y todo lo demás que necesitáramos para llenar nuestros reservorios… no estaríamos hablando hoy", dice O’Brien.

Aún así, pregunta: “¿Cuántos acres de almendras vamos a poner en este condado antes de que la gente diga tío?"

While O'Brien passes in front of a garden, the mechanical buzz of an agricultural well enters through the truck window.

“Puedes oírlos gritar", dice, “y sigue y sigue y sigue".

——————

California was the last in the nation to regulate groundwater throughout the state.

There were limited attempts to address it before 2014: the financing of subsidies for local governments was hung in exchange for developing groundwater management plans.A monitoring program by monitoring groundwater levels.Some regions, such as Orange County, managed their underground waters themselves for decades, charging the pumpers to pay the water to replace the aquifers.

At the end of the 1970s, at the end of a historical drought, the then governor.Water Rights Commission, Jerry Brown, requested a solid state policy to protect groundwater and recommended that local agencies take the initiative in adopting management plans.If they failed, the State Water Board could bring to the Attorney General.

The effort led to a more thorough study but few significant changes.

But as the last drought gained strength, so did the legislation, and Brown must have sounded familiar.The law assigned to local groundwater agencies the task of developing plans to avoid the aggravation of the main replicas of the exhaustion of groundwater, which include “significant and unreasonable“ intrusion of seawater, sinking of the land and degradation ofWater quality.

However, two decades are still missing for the state mandate.

The law "is not prepared for current drought. Está orientado a futuras sequías, que van a ser mucho peores ", dijo.Felicia Marcus, who presided over the State Board of Water Resources Control under Brown's direction during the last drought.

“They were designed as a coverage of climate change and a way to ensure that people can grow in the future.They were not an instantal curita ".

Marcus and the legislators involved at that time said that the period of 20 years was established due to the time necessary to create new local agencies and allow streams and other sources to gradually recharge the exhausted groundwater for decades for decades.

“Fue una especie de unión entre lo que se podía hacer tanto en la práctica como en la política, junto con lo que se tenía que hacer desde un punto de vista ambiental", dijo el ex asambleísta.Roger Dickinson, Democrat of Sacramento and main author of one of the bills.

Aún así, dado el ritmo del cambio climático, la línea de tiempo les da “tal vez más de lo que debería haber sido, ahora mirando hacia atrás", dijo Pavley.

“Para un estado como California que se enorgullece de ser sensible y orientado hacia el medio ambiente, tenemos un largo camino por recorrer cuando se trata de administrar nuestras aguas subterráneas y proteger el acceso al agua potable para todos los californianos", dijo Pavley.

The California Agricultural Office opposed the legislation, saying that it was too long and long.According to some estimates, between 500,000 and one million acres of farmland would have to be inactivity to put an end to excessive water use of the San Joaquín Valley.

Now the attention focuses on helping producers to participate in the local planning process, said Chris Scheuring, California Farm Bureau's water lawyer.

“Tarde o temprano, tendríamos que tener en cuenta la disminución de los niveles de agua subterránea en algunos de los lugares", dijo. “Los agricultores no necesariamente adoptaron (la ley) al principio, pero seguramente están tratando de descubrir cómo lidiar con ella ahora".

Although local agencies - largely led by agricultural interests - have two decades to reduce excessive pumping to sustainable levels, their efforts to discover how to do so are continuous.January 2020 was the deadline for the agencies responsible for overexploited basins more critically presenting plans to manage their groundwater;The rest has until 2022.

Stephanie Anagnoson, director of Water and Natural Resources of Wood County, where groundwater is critically overexploited, said she feels deeply conflict with the timeline.

“Estamos trabajando muy duro y, a menudo, siento que la mitad del mundo está como ‘¿Por qué no estás haciendo esto al doble de velocidad?’ Y la otra mitad es como ‘¿Por qué vas tan rápido? ¡Tienes 20 años! ‘", Dijo.

So far, the Water Resources Department has approved plans for a Salinas Valley basin and another in Santa Cruzy Count.A common issue was that water agencies needed to consider impacts on drinking water wells.

“Eso es un problema, si ahora solo hemos revisado cuatro planes", dijo el arquitecto de la ley de aguas subterráneas Pavley, quien dijo que podría haber una necesidad de más fondos o personal para acelerar la revisión. “Eso es una bandera roja".

Paul Gosselin, subdirector de gestión de aguas subterráneas en todo el estado de California, dijo que la agencia tiene la tarea de revisar los planes que tienen miles de páginas cada uno y aportar información “específica y procesable" sobre cada uno.

But he said that local agencies can begin to implement them now, even while they are still being evaluated.

But some residents with dry wells blame local and state officials for not controlling pumping. “¿Quién supuestamente está vigilando nuestras aguas subterráneas?" dijo Mario Bringetto, un propietario del condado de Madera cuya bomba ahora succiona suciedad en sus tuberías cuando cae el nivel freático. “Las personas que están a cargo están haciendo un trabajo terrible, en mi opinión".

If local agencies do not develop or implement satisfactory plans, the State Water Board can intervene.

El ex presidente de la junta de agua, Marcus, dijo que “la gente no puede esperar 20 años", así que el Departamento de Recursos Hídricos debe tomar medidas firmes para garantizar que los planes “se basen en cosas reales, no en ilusiones".

In Glenn de O'Brien County, local agencies responsible for monitoring groundwater under their home have not yet presented their plans. El agua allí no se considera “críticamente sobreexplotada", por lo que los planes no deben entregarse hasta enero de 2022.

“He escuchado recientemente de varias personas que (la ley) es como 10 años demasiado tarde", dijo Lisa Hunter, quien lidera el esfuerzo del condado para redactar el plan. “Los que están teniendo problemas en este momento, no hay nada para ayudar a aliviar sus temores".

Some researchers predict that the new plans will not protect the shallow drinking water wells that serve households, many of them in disadvantaged communities.Thousands of domestic drinking water wells and hundreds of communities could fail under the current sustainability objectives.

The plans of the San Joaquín Valley, for example, could allow up to 12,000 drinking water wells will be partially or completely dried by 2040, according to the water femination.46,000 to 127,000 people could lose access to some drinking water supplies.

In 2015, Jay Famiglietti, then senior water scientist in the NASA and Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory, warned that the new law would allow “almost 30 years before we know what is working.

“Para entonces, es posible que no quede agua subterránea para sustentar", escribió.

Since then, the exhaustion rate has accelerated: it is approximately 1.5 times higher now than the measure during the previous droughts, according to preliminary satellite data, said Famiglietti.

“Las cosas solo han empeorado", dijo.

——————

On a hot July day, O'Brien leaves the dry bed of the Stony Gorge Lake when his daughter -in -law sends him a text message: the water has finally returned, after five long weeks.

The first thing O'Brien does when he arrives home is to open the hose. “Que me condenen", dice O’Brien, pasando los dedos por el arroyo.His two pitbulls, delighted with the dew, bite the water that comes out of the tap.

Inside, O'Brien puts his hands under the tap and dries the face with the water. “No sabes lo bien que se siente", dice. “Para poder ponértelo en la cara, quiero decir …", mientras agarra un paquete de toallitas húmedas para bebés ydice esto "Simplemente no lo corta".

Many of its neighbors, however, still wait without water.Some report that waiting times to pierce their new wells or lower their bombs last for months, leaving whole homes, their pets and their cattle living with deliveries of tank trucks, bottled water supplies and hoses connected to the neighbors of the neighbors.

But O'Brien does not yet feel safe even now that the water flows again.As the endless drought cycles take over California, groundwater under his house is falling more and more.

“No sé cuánto tiempo va a durar esto", dice, de pie en su patio reseco al otro lado de la calle de huertos verdes, exuberantes e irrigados."We just hope it will last for a while.And let's have some rain ".

_

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