Farmers race to sink water into ground after storms By Lisa McEwen
the better. It’s like putting money in the piggy bank,” Stuller said. The metered water is reported through irrigation districts to their corresponding GSA, and growers receive credit for add- ing water to the groundwater profile. For the East Kaweah GSA, which includes the Tulare basin, the credits are valid for five years, and future surface water alloca- tions will not be affected. In addition to temporary basins, grow- ers are also letting water run through nat- ural waterways that traverse their ranch- es, such as creeks or ditches, or running it through their existing irrigation infrastruc- ture. Some growers are using already open ground while others are removing trees to build permanent structures. Citrus grower David Atkinson of Atkinson Acres in Exeter made the de- cision to remove 75 Gold Nugget man- darin trees—with the crop still on—to build a permanent half-acre pond for recharge. He initially wanted to build it in the fall but backed out. Motivated by uncontrolled season water priced at $38 an acre-foot, he pulled the trigger on the project. He said he wished he had done it sooner. “I could have been sinking water for two weeks now,” he said. “But this is an opportunity to put water in the ground, and I’m going to do as much as possible for as long as possible. We’re not doing this for this summer; we are doing this
Growers in the San Joaquin Valley are hurriedly building temporary ground- water sinking basins to take advantage of inexpensive, uncontrolled seasonal water. And they are racing to replenish underground water supplies that could carry them through drier years ahead. In Tulare County, farm manager Zack Stuller’s phone started ringing nonstop in late December, after a series of intense storms fueled by atmospheric rivers wal- loped California, dumping snow in the mountains and rain in the lowlands. Clients of Stuller’s farm management and land development business took note of conditions in the San Joaquin River and Kaweah River watersheds and anticipated an opportunity to conduct on-farm recharge—if they had a place to put it. “Everyone is scrambling,” Stuller said as he surveyed a recent project in Exeter. “We weren’t prepared for this much wa- ter, and we can’t build them fast enough.” In the past month, Stuller’s crews have built 20 temporary basins, which tend to be simple and inexpensive—think of a backhoe to build berms and pipe or hoses to siphon water from an irrigation district turnout. Depending on the con- nection, the water slowly dribbles out or is transported through pipes to spread as evenly as possible throughout the field. Since the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation declared uncontrolled season water in
Zack Stuller is working with farmers in Tulare County to help them take advantage of inexpensive seasonal water to recharge farm aquifers and build up credits under California’s groundwater law.
late December, farmers who are Friant Division water users figured out ways to sink water rather than let it go downstream until Feb. 10, when the release ended. The Friant Division of the Central Valley Project delivers water to more than 1 million acres of irrigable farm- land on the east side of the southern San Joaquin Valley, from Chowchilla to the Tehachapi Mountains. Water travels via the Friant-Kern Canal, which the Friant Water Authority maintains and operates,
with San Joaquin River water stored at Millerton Lake. The water serves more than 30 irrigation districts and cities, and 15,000 family farms. Due to California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, “every- one is coming up with ideas of how to get water in the ground,” said Stuller, who sits on the boards of two area Groundwater Sustainability Agencies, or GSAs, that oversee the health of groundwater basins. “The more we can distribute locally,
See RECHARGE, Page 23
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