AG ALERT: Water managers discuss SGMA-related solutions

By Christina Souza, Ag Alert

During an annual irrigation conference, water managers, farmers and consultants described creative solutions they’re pursuing to help stretch California water supplies, in particular in response to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, a 2014 law that requires local agencies to bring depleted groundwater basins into balance.

Presenters at the California Irrigation Institute virtual conference earlier this month discussed technology and solutions to help comply with SGMA and leverage water supplies.

“As much as 1 million acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland could go fallow as SGMA is implemented over the next 20 years,” said Danny Merkley, California Farm Bureau director of water resources and CII board member. “Therefore, it is critical that local and regional interests work together to forge solutions that will enhance supplies.”

Merkley said conference presenters discussed “many innovative and exciting solutions that could be considered for the state’s water future.”

In discussing agricultural water management and stretching supplies due to SGMA, Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage District general manager Eric Averett described the district’s development of a web-based water-accounting platform and trading system.

The system, developed with the Environmental Defense Fund and West Water Research, a water marketing and trading firm, allows landowners in the Kern County district to track and monitor water usage and enter into market transactions as a buyer or seller.

“My goal as a water district manager is to manage the resource in a way that minimizes impacts associated with demand-reduction measures that may be required while, at the same time, maximizing economic opportunities,” Averett said. “To do that, I really need to create some flexibility within the system and empower landowners to make informed decisions.”

Water trading is going to be important to the state’s water management future, he said, adding, “It really is an opportunity for landowners to manage the resource.”

There are several challenges to developing this system, he said, including the need for policy approvals and environmental compliance. He noted that because water districts track water differently, there is no standardized or trusted system of accounting.

“This is new territory and (districts) haven’t had an opportunity to develop policies to address these types of transactions,” Averett said. “And districts have been very protective of their water supplies. As water district managers, we have to develop those policies in recognition that that’s going to be necessary for landowners to more effectively manage the resource, and do so on a regional level.”

Similar to how accounting platforms are designed by banking institutions for finances, he explained, the district’s water-accounting system allows landowners to log onto the web to view parcels and water supplies. At the end of the year, he said landowners can see whether they have a water surplus or deficit, and make the appropriate transactions.

The system also has a modeling tool to enable users to simulate actions, such as calculating water supplies if a well is shut down for a period of time.

San Luis Canal Co. general manager Chase Hurley described how, in preparing for SGMA, a few farmers adjacent to the San Joaquin River in Madera County came together to tackle land subsidence.

The effort by the Red Top Mitigated Land Group, he said, involved construction of infrastructure farmers can use to flood land for recharge and transfer water in lieu of deep pumping.

“The landowners put a lot of assets in the ground, in terms of conveyance infrastructure pipelines, a pumping plant and purchased supplemental surface water supply,” Hurley said. “They also got a lot better at how they manage day-to-day operation in terms of collection of data. They knew that they had to get better at knowing their crop ET (evapotranspiration) and do a better job on farm-water budgets.”

The farm landowners, Hurley said, also developed a pumping credit program and a concept for a local trading platform.

Under SGMA, local groundwater sustainability agencies must develop groundwater management plans to balance supplies. In aiding GSAs and districts with satellite-based data collection, Joel Kimmelshue, founding partner and agricultural soil scientist at consulting firm Land IQ, talked about the importance of “ground-truthing” actual conditions in the field to validate remote-sensing models.

Kimmelshue said GSAs that he consults face challenges, “in that some of them have a single water source and some of them have multiple water sources. Many of them look at different allocation methodologies, but fundamental to that is how much water is being consumed from an evapotranspiration perspective.”