[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 7/5/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment

 

July 5, 2007

 

1.  Top Item

 

How much water is in the ground?; Bill in Legislature aims to find out

Stockton Record – 7/4/07

By Hank Shaw, staff writer

 

SACRAMENTO - Legislation that would help reveal how much drinking water remains beneath California communities scored an unusual victory Tuesday.

 

Sponsored by state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, the bill would require local entities to monitor how deep they must delve before hitting groundwater, then report it to the state. Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties have been measuring how much water is taken from the ground since 1955.

 

No one knows how much water is left beneath the Central Valley, but the lakes of water lying beneath the Central Valley form, collectively, the second-most pumped aquifer in the nation. So much water has been sucked out of the ground that the land above has sunk in some places.

 

The Legislature has passed the monitoring bill two years running, only to see it vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - whose veto message employed arguments used by the California Farm Bureau Federation to oppose the bill.

 

But Tuesday, the Farm Bureau dropped its opposition, and Steinberg's bill passed the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee 7-2.

 

Assemblyman Tom Berryhill, R-Ceres, voted against the measure but left open the possibility he'd vote for it once he got a chance to read the latest version.

 

Nearly two-thirds of San Joaquin County's water supply comes from groundwater, and experts say such heavy use lowers permanent water levels in the aquifer by 200,000 acre-feet of water each year - enough water to supply the entire city of Stockton for a year.

 

Some areas in the Valley are already well-monitored, such as eastern San Joaquin County, Sacramento and Kern County.

 

Scientists know little or nothing about others, notably western San Joaquin County and Fresno.

 

Steinberg's legislation requires all water basins be monitored, but it's up to individual well owners, local cities, water agencies, counties or volunteer groups to do the checking. Earlier versions of the bill would have let the state Department of Water Resources monitor water levels, then charge the locals for doing it. This was one of the Farm Bureau's chief concerns.

 

Farm Bureau water analyst Tony Francois said in February his organization isn't opposed to more monitoring in the Central Valley. It was more concerned about burdening remote areas that aren't part of the state's water network, he said. #

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070704/A_NEWS/707040313

####