After a series of dry winters in California, the 2022-23 season has brought a series of storms filling reservoirs and piling up the Sierra snowpack. The turnaround led last Friday.
This drought may be over, but California鈥檚 long-term water issues remain.
鈥淲hen it鈥檚 raining out, you can鈥檛 ask customers to be troubled with saving a lot of water when the reservoirs are full. It starts to jeopardize credibility with the public,鈥 Jay Lund, professor of civil and environmental engineering at 嘿嘿视频 and vice director of the Center for Watershed Sciences on campus,
Winter 2022-23 may have been exceptionally wet, but it comes after a 20-year stretch of abnormally dry weather in the state. What will happen in future years, as a changing climate propels hotter summers and more intense storm seasons?
Right now, reservoirs are brimming. But the state鈥檚 ecosystems have sustained years of damage in the dry years and the groundwater aquifers that supply much of the state鈥檚 water have been drawn down.
Recharging groundwater
"Groundwater is the dark matter of the hydrologic cycle," . "The fact that these are such huge volumes of water allows them to take a lot of abuse and to be depleted year after year."
California leaned hard on those aquifers in the drought years. Can this year鈥檚 water help them recharge? Gov. Newsom recently signed an executive order easing requirements for diverting water flows onto fields where it can soak into the soil and recharge aquifers. And the to divert 600,000 acre-feet of floodwater from the San Joaquin river into flood groundwater recharge.
The governor鈥檚 order is a positive step, Helen Dahlke, professor of land, air and water resources at 嘿嘿视频, . Groundwater replenishment is a cheap way to manage and store excess water, she said.
鈥淩eally taking advantage of those wet years when they occur is key in order to secure more water for future years,鈥 Dahlke said. 鈥淲e have a groundwater aquifer that can take three times the amount of water that we can store in surface water reservoirs, and it鈥檚 protected from evaporation.鈥
Media Resources
(California Waterblog)