One of the most important environmental laws in state history turned 10 last month. You’d be forgiven if you didn’t notice. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act remains, as the dwindling resource it aims to protect, largely invisible to most Californians.
Apart from this, the first decade of SGMA (“sigma” for those who know well) has laid a foundation, which is still fragile in some areas, due to rural and economic transformation. If we allow it, this law may develop a resilient environment in an era of whiplash whiplash.
On paper, this is a law about managing a finite, limited and highly invisible resource. In implementation, it must be about revitalizing the virtual world and the communities at the heart of the empire.
California created a global orchard by tapping into the ancient waters of the Central Valley. More of that the water is now gonehe can come back fully. By the early 2010s, this long decline in groundwater finally became impossible to ignore as drought dried up wells, subsidence and canals collapsed. Faced with the deep scars of groundwater exhaustion, lawmakers passed the SGMA – a major road map to reach a state where we take out only as much water as we take in.
In the past ten years, we have not fully addressed the scale of change needed to balance groundwater aquifers and ensure we have enough water to sustain our farms, ecosystems and rural communities into the future. Estimates suggest up to 900,000 acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley alone may require planting to reduce groundwater abstraction and balance supply and demand. That is greater than the total area The five largest cities in California combined — and the San Joaquin Valley isn’t the only area that will need to take farms out of production.
If you have ever walked in the dust of a field that was once heavily plowed and left to the sun and wind, you may have heard what will happen if we leave the field without production. The Central Valley will be rebuilt into a dry, weed-filled speckled dust. In the early days of SGMA, the conversations my colleagues and I had with farmers across the valley made it clear that groundwater depletion was as big a problem as water: We needed a strong transition plan for the hundreds of thousands of hectares facing reduced irrigation.
This concern has been the offspring of the government’s Land Revenue Reclamation Program, a much-needed support program for the transition to micro-irrigated land. Launched in the summer of 2022, it provides block grants and technical assistance to organizations and nations to restore irrigated agricultural land to uses that reduce reliance on groundwater while providing new social benefits. Adding “multibenefit” to the program’s official name is not just a cliché. There are literally layers and layers of undiscovered benefits hidden in repurposed gardening.
Take, for example, the rebirth of former farmland at the confluence of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin rivers in the Central Valley, an early success but one that should inform California’s land restoration program. About 1,600 acres Former farmland has been transformed into Dos Rios State Park, an active floodplain with a long list of beneficiaries, people and more, that is slowly growing. Brush rabbits, woodrats, Swainson’s hawks, Central Valley Chinook salmon, steelhead trout, Bell’s vireos, giant sandhill cranes — all protected species — have found a home in a restored floodplain. Many migratory birds from the Pacific Flyway make it so.
Land and water are allowed to co-exist in Dos Rios in a way that mirrors much of the Central Valley before the spread of Europeans. The open space allows the land to soak up the flood water, recharging the groundwater while also protecting the land from flooding, including tribal communities and socio-economics. In addition, wetlands create a large number of carbon sequestering plants that also clean our water. It’s a number of positive benefits that underline the potential of the former farmland across the Central Valley.
The land repurchase program provides funding to support these types of projects throughout the state. Like its sister SGMA, it prioritizes regional and local leadership, providing grants to companies such as Groundwater Sustainability Agencies and nations, which, in turn, work with local groups to develop programs and fund projects. In just two years, the program has been a quiet success, helping approx 100 organizations working on multiple projects in regions covering 3.3 million hectares.
However, the current level of government funding is not commensurate with the challenge we face. The recent approval by lawmakers of a climate bond it is a welcome step in the right direction. As voters, we have the opportunity to approve this important funding this fall if it appears on the November ballot as Proposition 4. It will include $200 million for land repurchases, $15 million for water data, $610 million for safe and affordable drinking water and $386. millions of groundwater systems.
But rural communities will need more to achieve what amounts to a rethinking of our lives and the world. Through its regional funding structure, the land restoration program gives farming communities the opportunity to practice transitioning to a sustainable water future. We need to provide the long-term funding needed to help them realize this change.
SGMA has begun to transition to a sustainable future where agriculture is compatible with long-term water supply. Ten years on, we need to embrace what this means not only for our relationship with all the water we can see, but also for the beautiful, vibrant world we are lucky enough to live with every day.
Ann Hayden is vice president of climate-resilient water programs at the Environmental Defense Fund.
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