Amid California’s cycles of wet and dry, both exacerbated by climate change, a new project is being implemented to harness floodwater.
There have been calls for conservation, with many farmers leaving their fields fallow and others selling off their livestock as the aquifers become depleted, causing wells to run dry.
Ponds and reservoirs are not filling back up to capacity, even with the heavy and extreme downpours that come amidst the drought-like conditions, leaving many to grasp at straws when looking for solutions to the water shortage.
Back in August, Governor Gavin Newsome, at a news conference, unveiled a broad strategy for bolstering the state’s water supply that includes targets to recycle more water, and expand reservoir storage.
In the 19-page document released before the news conference, the Newsom administration outlined efforts that include bolstering recycled water supplies and storage capacity, both in reservoirs and groundwater, as well as increased desalination of brackish water.
A key theme of the strategy is expediting permitting for a range of projects, including groundwater recharge and desalination. At the briefing, Newsom bemoaned what he called the “regulatory thickets” slowing these efforts, and pledged to work with the Legislature in its last weeks of session to “help us fast track these projects.”
The groundwater recharge project
Traditional water storage in the form of damming rivers to create reservoirs damages the environment. However, a coalition of local farmers in the Central Valley, and the nearby city of Huron are trying to turn former hemp and tomato fields into massive receptacles that can hold water as it percolates into the ground during wet years.
The aim of the project is to capture floodwaters that would otherwise rush out to the sea, or damage towns, cities and crops.
The new project, known as a recharge system, turns unused fields into large ponds to hold water that will then percolate into the porous rock and earth below, creating or restoring an aquifer rather than allowing the water to go rushing to the sea.
Capturing runoff will also help protect the city of Huron, with less than 7,000 people from catastrophic floods. “I’m hoping we can make water more affordable for our residents,” said Huron Mayor Rey Leon.
The recharge project in Huron is one of about 340 recharge systems that have been proposed by water agencies in California. The projects will collect enough water to store 2.2 million acre-feet by 2030 if they all are built, the state Department of Water Resources said. That’s enough for 4.4 million households for a year.
Other countries including India are also beginning to increase the use of recharge ponds to store water in natural or human-made aquifers. Water use and resilience is among the topics being discussed by world leaders at the United Nations COP27 climate summit in Egypt this month.
In addition to the comparatively small projects being built by rural water districts and farmers, the massive Metropolitan Water District, a regional water wholesaler that serves Southern and parts of Central California, is building a 1,500-acre recharge pond in the high desert near Palmdale, in partnership with local water authorities.
“These human-made aquifers and underground water banks will not solve all of California’s water problems, but they can make a significant dent,” said Sarah Woolf, a water consultant whose family owns some of the farmland being used for the Huron project.
