Column: Groundwater Law Has Not Stopped Subsidence

By Tom Elias

Drive almost any road in the vast San Joaquin Valley and you’ll see irrigation pipes standing up several feet tall in the middle of fields and orchards, pipes that once were underground.

These metallic artifacts are emblematic of the utter failure of a 2014 law once billed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown as a landmark achievement. The omnipresent pipes, often unnoticed by speeding motorists, are symptoms of subsidence, the result of decades of overpumping groundwater in all the frequent episodes when California endured drought conditions, right up to this moment.

Pumping their ever-deeper wells has been about the only way the state’s huge and nationally vital agribusiness community could maintain production of everything from peaches to peas, broccoli to pistachios, tomatoes to citrus, cotton to cauliflower, when snowpack has been thin atop the high Sierra Nevada Mountains and the state’s two large aqueducts cut back their deliveries to mere drops – as they’ve had to do this summer.

The 2014 law was actually a rather ho-hum, non-crisis approach to something that was already a big problem many years before the law passed. The timetable of the law has increased metering on wells tapping into groundwater, but leaves no limit on what anyone can pump until 2030, when it may be too late.

For, as a new Stanford University study shows, not only are the state’s groundwater reserves disappearing, but it’s decreasingly likely they can ever be restored to historic previous levels, or that the land subsidence which leaves irrigation pipes standing high above the land they water can ever be completely reversed.

The comforting thought behind making water wells ever deeper as farms chase new groundwater supplies has always been that recharging the natural storage basins below ground level will eventually replace whatever is used.

The study, from Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences. suggests this isn’t so. In fact, the research suggests ground can continue to sink even if groundwater levels are stable or rising. That’s because when water is taken from the ground, the sheer weight of the land above the storage basin causes a partial collapse of sub-surface rocks around the storage spaces, known as aquifers.

Even refilling those spaces above capacity – not a realistic possibility in the near future – cannot fully reverse this effect. The Stanford research indicated it’s unrealistic to expect ground levels ever to re-rise more than about one-third of the distance they have dropped.

Subsidence levels vary a bit, but so far, they typically total about 20 feet over the last 65 years, gradual but now very visible. That only becomes disastrous when it affects things on the surface, like cracking roads and bridges and moving foundations of homes and other buildings.

The 2014 law, called the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, forced local water districts to make plans for avoiding “significant and unreasonable” new subsidence. It did not require those agencies to figure out how to prevent disputes between farmers or cities when one well-owner drills deeper and siphons off supplies from others.

This very phenomenon has caused at least two episodes where portions of Central Valley cities suddenly saw their faucets run dry, forcing them to import supplies from unaffected nearby areas. This can be both expensive and unfair, but there’s often little the owners of suddenly dry wells can do about it. For one thing, farmers and cities whose wells dry up can’t always tell where their water went or who took it. They can only be sure it flowed downhill and away from them.

All of which makes it very obvious that the 2014 law was far too meek when it passed and that more serious action to regulate and reduce groundwater use is needed.

But that is not a priority for the current Legislature, dominated by coastal, urban politicians whose constituents are untouched by what’s happening under the ground where their food supplies are grown. Nor have Central Valley lawmakers done much, not wishing to offend corporate farms that often donate big campaign dollars.

Which means more fields will be fallowed in the next few years, more wells will run dry, more cities will take emergency steps to find water supplies and the ground will likely sink ever lower.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,” is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

in Opinion
Related Posts

New Program Can Help Protect Southern California Homes in the Event of an Earthquake

May 13, 2023

May 13, 2023

Residents Have Until May 31 To Apply For Seismic Retrofit Grants By Janiele Maffei, Chief Mitigation Officer for the California...

Column: Tired OF Declinists? Some Enduring New California Positives

April 18, 2023

April 18, 2023

By Thomas D. Elias California has taken a beating lately, with (mostly Republican) governors of other states blasting many aspects...

Column: SB 9 Ended R-1 Zoning, but It’s Not Meeting Goals

March 11, 2023

March 11, 2023

By Tom Elias More than a year after it took effect, the landmark housing density law known as SB 9...

Column: The Inevitable Conversions Begin Multiplying

February 25, 2023

February 25, 2023

By Tom Elias It’s a phenomenon from New York to Dallas to Fresno and Los Angeles, one that seemed inevitable...

Column: The Fantasy World of California Housing Policy

February 20, 2023

February 20, 2023

By Tom Elias If you’re looking for sure things among bills under consideration in the state Legislature, think of one...

Column: State Usurping Key Powers From Cities

January 28, 2023

January 28, 2023

By Tom Elias All over California last fall, hundreds of the civic minded spent thousands of hours and millions of...

Column – A California Positive: Kids Swarm Extra Classes

January 24, 2023

January 24, 2023

By Tom Elias It’s become a cliché, the shibboleth that California has lousy public schools and most of the kids...

​​Column: No One Very Pleased as New Rooftop Solar Rules Improve

December 9, 2022

December 9, 2022

By Tom Elias, Columnist Only rarely does the California Public Utilities Commission, long known as the least responsive agency in...

Column: Will New Political Players Offer More Effective Local Government for Los Angeles & Venice?

December 5, 2022

December 5, 2022

Bass, Park could become unlikely allies in fighting homelessness, rising crime and the quality-of-life issues that plague both Angelenos and...

Column – Gas Gougers Beware: California Is Onto You at Last

November 11, 2022

November 11, 2022

By Tom Elias It has taken more than 50 years of on-and-off gasoline price gouging, but at long last California...

$87,581,047.01: Candidate Rick Caruso on Pace to Smash All Spending Records in His Bid to Become Mayor of Los Angeles

November 4, 2022

November 4, 2022

Caruso overwhelming Bass nearly 10-1! By Nick Antonicello According to the LA Ethics Commission as of October 31st, billionaire developer...

“Ten Takes” to Watch as CD-11 Hopefuls Park & Darling Close out the Campaign in a Mad Dash to the Finish Line!

November 4, 2022

November 4, 2022

By Nick Antonicello And after some sixteen months of posturing, positioning and intensive campaigning be it door to door, shaking...

Column: Who’s the ‘True’ Democrat in CD-11?

October 30, 2022

October 30, 2022

So who is the true Democrat in this race to succeed Mike Bonin in CD-11? While the campaign for city...

Column: Tenant Support Could Tip the Political Scales in CD-11 Council Race

October 29, 2022

October 29, 2022

Darling pushes advocacy of renter’s rights over Park in tightly contested battle to succeed Mike Bonin! By Nick Antonicello In...

Column: Money & Messaging That Is Persuasive and Memorable May Just Make Rick Caruso Our Next Mayor!

October 25, 2022

October 25, 2022

Moving away from direct mail, Caruso saturates broadcast television with a more disciplined message that is resonating with an angry...