Dry without a Sense of Humor

The Soil Agricultural Groundwater Banking Index (SAGBI) is a 

suitability index for groundwater recharge on agricultural land.

It isn’t just farmers who have watched their parched fields wither and die from a lack of water. California, the nation’s main supplier of vegetables, is in deep trouble… and we are all going to pay even more hard dollars for produce (and every other farm/ranch product). And no, the recent storms, no matter how virulent they were, have not remotely begun to restore the necessary water resources – particularly in those once massive containers, deep groundwater in wells and aquifers, that are/were the lifeblood of so many farms and outlying communities. But just ordinary tap water is disappearing as well. This reality in moving rapidly into urban life as well.

Mendocino’s wells are also running dry at an alarming rate. Las Vegas is already shuddering at the depletion of its water resources. The story is rapidly becoming the tale of so much of the United States, even that massive Ogallala (High Plains) Aquifer which runs through Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming… parts of which are already bone dry despite the lovely aqua color on the above map. 

Regional conflicts, shooting wars, have already erupted in Africa over water rights. It’s just the beginning. Oil? On its way out. Water… the battles are just beginning. Just looking at the changes, happening with unprecedented ferocity in California’s San Joaquin Valley, presents a nasty “canary in the coal” mine scenario for the entire western half of the United States. Grain, livestock and vegetables are at risk. Added to obvious overuse, it is our accelerating strangulation of water resources, “das Gift” of the “here, now and for the foreseeable future” climate change.

Maria L. La Ganga, Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee and Ian James, writing for the December 18th Los Angeles Times, drill down into that perilous water reality in California’s major agricultural San Joaquin Valley: “Vicki McDowell woke up on a Saturday morning in May, thinking about what she would make her son for breakfast. He was visiting from Hayward, and she wanted to whip up something special. Biscuits and gravy. Fried potatoes. Eggs.

“She walked to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. Turned on the faucet. Nothing happened. Worried, she tried the bathroom sink. Still nothing. She flushed the toilet. It gurgled… The 70-year-old called her landlord. He called a well driller. The news was grim. The well that pumped water to the small, cream-colored house she rents on an olive ranch had gone dry… Six months have passed. It’s still dry… ‘I’ve never lived in the country,’ said McDowell, who moved here to the outskirts of the Tulare County seat three years ago. ‘I thought, that’s an easy fix. It wasn’t.’

“In the verdant San Joaquin Valley, one of the nation’s most productive farming regions, domestic wells like McDowell’s are drying up at an alarming pace as a frenzy of new well construction and heavy agricultural pumping sends the underground water supply to new lows during one of the most severe droughts on record…

“Although aquifers are declining throughout the 10,000-square-mile valley, the analysis showed that some of the heaviest impacts have been felt in Tulare County. Forty percent of the wells dug in the valley in 2021 were drilled here, and more residential wells have gone dry here than in any other county in the region.

“The Times sifted through more than 1 million Well Completion Reports from the state Department of Water Resources. These reports were used to analyze patterns in well drilling — including dates, locations and depths — to understand how the agriculture industry’s access to groundwater has increased over time. Another source was the department’s periodic groundwater level measurements data, a collection of more than 2 million records from thousands of wells across the state, to track the impact of drilling and pumping on the water supply.

“The sobering results show a region in which agriculture has vastly outgrown its water supply. In Tulare County, where agriculture is the top industry and brought in more than $7 billion in 2020, hundreds of families have been left without running water. The most harm has been felt by low-income residents and small farmers. Continued heavy pumping and unchecked agricultural well drilling have left the future water supply in question… Michael Hagman, executive director of the East Kaweah Groundwater Sustainability Agency, calls the region the ‘poster child’ for groundwater overuse.” Groundwater is simply not being replenished.

We’re drilling increasingly deeper with decreasing results. All across the western half of the country, it started with wind-driven groundwater pumping a century-plus ago, accelerated with diesel-power, and is now super-compounded by climate change… which sure looks a lot more like a more permanent desertification. To most of us, we just take water availability for granted, rail at any imposed water rationing/conservation efforts and love to sink our toes into lush grassy lawns. Until it’s gone.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I do remember a time when “conservation” and “conservative” were inexorably linked… long ago.