For farmer Cannon Michael, life “is almost exclusively focused on finding ways to overcome the drought, and in California, when it comes to saving water, there’s no time to waste,” writes Sena Christian in the online magazine Ensia. On his farm near Los Banos in the Central Valley, Michael has fallowed nearly 10 percent of his irrigated land and converted half of it to drip irrigation, an expensive project but one that will reduce water use per acre by half, says the story developed in partnership with FERN.
It is all part of the effort by a small group of Central Valley farmers, led by Michael, to free up water for their neighbors on the other side of the valley who had their irrigation allotment cut off last year by the state when reservoirs levels got dangerously low.
Drought has exacerbated the issue, but water allocation is a perennial problem in California. This is the second year of zero allocation of irrigation water for farmers, so wells are the answer, if only until aquifer levels fall. A new state law requires local agencies to write plans for sustainable use of groundwater, but they don’t take effect until 2020 or 2022. And, “problems seem to stem from poor accounting of water usage,” writes Christian.
State allocations of water rights are five times larger than the volume that streams and rivers would carry in a good year. Researchers say most water-rights holders have a permit but not the license, which is the final confirmation of rights. That creates an opportunity to bring water rights more into line with actual use if state officials want to do so, one researcher tells Christian.