groundwater

A decade or more ago, farmers in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado began to run out of irrigation water. The solution, after years of court cases and finger-pointing, was an agreement to raise the price of water, says the NPR blog The Salt.

Three new studies show that the West is running low on water, and that much of that decline is a result of climate change, says High Country News.

Synthetic fertilizer accounts for more than a third of the 1.8 million tons of new nitrogen entering California each year, and animal feed accounts for another 12 percent, making agriculture the largest single source of nitrate pollution in the state, according to a new report from the UC Davis Agriculture Sustainability Institute and the University of California division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Three farmers in western Kansas are partnering with a state agency in a test of thrifty irrigation systems that require less water to grow crops in the Plains

Water levels in the aquifer underlying eastern Idaho are plummeting, so state officials have proposed creation of the East Snake Plain Aquifer groundwater management area, says The Associated Press. The result would be a plan that parcels out water to farmers and other users in predictable amounts rather than abrupt cutbacks when the holders of senior rights to the water claim their share.

Stanford researchers say that California’s drought-stricken Central Valley harbors three times the supply of groundwater previously thought. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, points up the need to develop a better understanding of deep aquifers, and has implications for regions beyond California where drought is a problem.

More than half the flow of rivers in the upper Colorado Basin is derived from groundwater, according to a study by the U.S. Geological Society. The study's authors hope it will compel state water managers to ask important questions, since rivers are a key source of irrigation and drinking water across the west. For instance, should a farmer’s use of a nearby river be limited if he or she is also pumping large amounts of groundwater?

In California, federal fisheries regulators are mulling two new plans to save the state’s endangered winter-run Chinook salmon and Delta smelt—plans that could mean serious water shortages for farmers. While this year saw ample rain and snowfall in the northern half of the state, regulators warn that the precipitation wasn’t enough to make up for several years of historic drought.

Since the days of the Gold Rush, "groundwater has been considered a property right; landowners are entitled to what's beneath them," says the Los Angeles Times; California is the only state in the West that does not regulate groundwater.