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The earth beneath Dennis Lebow’s gumboots is saturated.
They are located in the Salinas Valley in California, about an hour south of San Jose. The valley is often referred to as the “salad bowl of the world” because it is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the US. California Department of Food and Agriculture.
Like other parts of the country, it rains almost every day between the end of 2022 and mid-January, due to the high humidity. an atmospheric river that has developed along the coast, brought extraordinary floods, mudslides and damaging winds to millions of Californians. At least 20 deaths have been linked to the storm.
The floods, which have drained more than 94 trillion liters of water in the country since December 24, according to one metrologist, should probably take Lebow’s mind off the project of managing limited water resources in the middle of a drought for Reiter Berry Farms, one of the largest berry producers in the world. But not yet.
Water will always be scarce here.
“It’s bittersweet,” he said.
“We need the rain. We benefit from the rain. But we have a lot of trouble when it rains too quickly.”
Unfortunately, much of the water that falls in the state flows into the ocean, said Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Davis. That’s because the infrastructure that helps California store and manage water, like large reservoirs, is cumbersome and generally unable to cope with strong and rapid changes in weather, made more often by human-caused climate change, he said.
Some of the largest and most important components of the country’s framework for containing and transporting water were built nearly 100 years ago. The Colorado Aqueduct, for example, which moves water from the Colorado River to Southern California, was built in the 1930s. So it’s no surprise that infrastructure that is “aging, deteriorating, or at increased risk” is an ongoing problem, according to the California Water Supply Strategy.
Long drought
The recent rainfall has only caused a water shortage in California, but not enough. The country has been experiencing drought for three years.
Even after heavy rains, about half of the country is still facing “severe drought,” according to monitoring by National Integrated Drought Information System.
All that uncaptured water in the middle of the drought begs the question: how can California store more water when it rains, used in a long, dry and hot spring?
Because agriculture uses 80 percent of the country’s water, according to the California Department of Natural ResourcesIt’s a dilemma that Californians, and global consumers of their products, hope smart people can solve.
“We have two water problems that we have to worry about every year. One is flooding and the other is drought,” Lund said. “And we have to worry about them every year, no matter how wet or dry it is.”
Aging infrastructure
Much of California’s vast water infrastructure, such as aqueducts, reservoirs and dams, was built for twentieth-century hydrology, not for the periods of drought and heavy rain seen today.
It’s confusing but even in a dry place like California, water reservoirs are not allowed to hold 100 percent of their capacity.
This is because basins really have two purposes: to store water but also to protect lives by capturing rain and preventing flooding during storms.
In response to the occurrence of “weather whiplash” – the term of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to describe the rapid weather, new forecasting technology empowers managers of older structures to be more agile to do both, Karla Nemeth, director. from the state Department of Water Resources, told CBC News.
California has been inundated with rain since late December, but the state’s water shortage is far from over.
Water stored in the state’s four reservoirs, including Lake Mendocino in Northern California and Lake Folsom, is now managed in conjunction with weather forecasts, which has never happened before.
Before this facility will be created to preemptively release water in the fall and winter to make room for winter storms, said Nemeth. If the storm doesn’t happen, the hard-to-replace water will disappear. Better forecasting means that water managers will now only release water from reservoirs if a major storm is forecast for the next day.
Agencies, including NOAA, help provide that important data to decision makers with pilots flying into atmospheric rivers for research.
“California’s infrastructure needs to be better able to handle this storm event,” Nemeth said.
‘Water is politics’
But it’s a balancing act.
Much infrastructure is used to capture water in the country at the expense of natural ecosystems. The diversion of moving water by levees and reservoirs is not good for salmon habitat or migratory birds and underscores the need for competing interests to weigh all creatures who need access to these increasingly scarce resources, Lund said.
“Water is political in California because it’s important,” he said.
new practice
Because agriculture uses so much water in California, industry has been forced to innovate and find ways to use less.
In some cases, that means doing things that haven’t been done before, including a project called Managed Aquifer Recharge, or MAR for short. It is an elegant title for what is a big hole in the field surrounded by a channel. It works by channeling runoff, when it rains, into an unlined dirt basin. The idea is that over time the water can penetrate the soil and flow back to the underground water basin that sits under the farms for future use.
There’s a lot of potential in places like California because huge, rechargeable underground aquifers can be found under 40 percent of its land, according to the Water Education Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Sacramento.
Proponents say it’s a great idea for farms in places like the Salinas Valley because pumping water from the basin, also called groundwater overdraft, causes more seawater or salt to be found in the aquifer. That’s bad news for everyone.
A farm Dennis Lebow managed to install a MAR site in the rice field in early 2013. He said it can be above the water basin when it rains to help create more water security and certainty for agriculture.
“You can’t believe that it rains continuously, but we have to produce crops here every year for the whole world,” he said. “This recharge material basically provides the irrigation needed to farm this ranch sustainably and doesn’t have much of an impact on groundwater.”
The project is led by the University of Santa Cruz and local water management agency. They help map the geology and hydrology of the area and approach private landowners about having MAR collection points on their land. The system includes a measurement system to encourage its use, operating like a normal water meter that starts counting down when water is put back into the ground.
A farmer will then get a rebate for the returned water. The rebate is part of an incentive for landowners to consider turning small portions of productive land into water catchments.
The success of projects like this will make or break some of the most important farmland in California, but the sector is still expected to face deep strains.
Even the Department of Water Resources acknowledges “California’s agricultural footprint is shrinking,” Nemeth said.
The country’s growing area could decline by as much as 15 percent in 25 years, according to Lund.
California has been hit by another major storm, adding to the hundreds of landslides the state has experienced this month. However, forecasters are predicting some relief after the stronger storm, which is expected to arrive in the next 24 hours.
Many farms were lost in places they relied on for food, but Lund found reassurance about California’s uncertain future in the pioneering efforts of settlers who built the state’s water infrastructure all those years ago.
“They have to build a system of water laws, irrigation technology, irrigation districts, all forms of human organization that don’t exist with people who move here,” he said.
“They have to adapt, which I think is interesting for what they have to do because of the climate change around them.”
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