Following the nearly record-setting rain and snowfall of last winter, California Gov. Jerry Brown removed most of the water conservation directives that were imposed during the five-year drought. But state officials say they will “clamp down on wasteful water use and impose a long-term conservation program that could create conflicts with urban water users,” reports the Sacramento Bee.
Brown lifted the drought emergency order in every county except for three counties in the agricultural Central Valley — Fresno, Kings, Tulare — and Tuolumne County, on the eastern edge of the Central Valley and adjacent to Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada. The governor said emergency drinking water projects will continue to help communities where wells have gone dry.
The snowpack in the northern Sierras is 61 percent above average, with more snow forecast over the past weekend, and major reservoirs have been replenished.
“But significant problems remain, notably the diminished groundwater aquifers in portions of the Central Valley,” said the Bee. “Farmers pumped groundwater relentlessly during the worst of the drought, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, even as they idled hundreds of thousands of acres because of water shortages. The Legislature in 2014 approved the state’s first-ever law regulating groundwater pumping, but it doesn’t begin to take effect until 2020.”