Landmark report calls for national effort to curb groundwater depletion

Even as groundwater levels have rapidly declined in farming regions from California’s Central Valley to the High Plains, the federal government has mostly taken a hands-off approach to the chronic depletion of the nation’s aquifers. But in a new report for the White House, scientists say the country is facing serious and unprecedented groundwater challenges that call for the federal government to play a larger role.

Members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology said the country needs better data to provide a comprehensive picture of how much groundwater there is and how fast it is being depleted. The scientists called for a national effort to advance strategies for safeguarding aquifers, including establishing a federal program that would provide incentives to encourage states and communities to manage underground water supplies sustainably.

“The current rate of groundwater pumping exceeds that of natural recharge,” the council said in the report. “Much of the water in the major aquifers in the U.S. is fossil water, recharged over 10,000 years ago, and will not be replaced naturally in centuries and millennia. In the western U.S. groundwater resources are being depleted at alarming rates, mostly from agricultural withdrawal.”

They said that groundwater, which sustains communities, food production and ecosystems, is a strategic resource in the face of climate change, and that addressing depletion is vital for the country’s future and will require a “comprehensive and informed approach.”

“The federal government has limited authority to regulate groundwater, but can deploy financial incentives, technical assistance, and convening power to promote groundwater sustainability,” the scientists said.

The scientific advisory council outlined several recommendations, including creating an interagency working group focused on groundwater; increasing investment in research, data collection and modeling; establishing regional “hubs” to coordinate management efforts; and starting a program that would provide grants to “incentivize groundwater conservation and management based on sound science.”

The 27-member council prepared the report for President Biden’s administration after a fact-finding effort that included hearing testimony from leading scientists and others. The timing of the report’s release one month before the handover of power to President-elect Donald Trump — who has said water is “horribly mismanaged” in California and has pledged to turn on a massive “faucet” for farmers and cities — leaves in doubt whether any of the proposals might lead to concrete changes anytime soon.

But experts said the report for the first time presents a framework for a national strategy that would promote and coordinate efforts to address the overuse of groundwater in regions where unchecked pumping from wells is causing aquifer levels to fall.

The seminal report is “a beacon for the future of groundwater management,” said Jay Famiglietti, a water scientist and global futures professor at Arizona State University. “Its recommendations are comprehensive and forward looking, and if implemented over time, can be a game-changer for groundwater sustainability in the United States.”

He said he thinks the White House report is “one of the most important groundwater documents ever written in the United States.”

Tristan Zannon stands beside a well at his family-owned pistachio farm in the Cuyama Valley. He and other farmers are involved in litigation with large agricultural landowners in the valley amid a dispute over how to manage the shrinking supply of groundwater.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Famiglietti has suggested that the federal government should go further and develop a national water policy. He and other scientists provided testimony to the council during a meeting last year and at a July workshop in Phoenix.

Famiglietti said he told a council staffer that the most important thing the country must do is gain a detailed understanding of “how much groundwater we have, how much we are using, and how these are changing over time.” He said he was pleased that this point was featured prominently in the report, which says the U.S. needs a “whole-of-country, unified, and comprehensive picture” of the nation’s groundwater.

The report notes that states are primarily responsible for water laws, policies and regulations.

In California, for example, the state is gradually implementing the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which sets goals for local agencies to curb overdraft by 2040. In Arizona, groundwater has been regulated in urban areas since 1980, but pumping remains unregulated in rural farming areas, where water levels have been dropping.

The report says that many communities probably “would initiate a transition to science-based groundwater management if funds and technical assistance were available.” The report also outlines how the federal government could help promote efforts to boost groundwater levels through managed aquifer recharge projects.

Famiglietti, a former NASA scientist whose research has included tracking declines in groundwater globally using satellite measurements, said he hopes the Trump administration will heed the recommendations.

“If they do not, I have no doubt that many of us in academics will take the lead on moving forward with various aspects of the plan over the next few years,” he said, adding that implementing even a portion of the recommendations would be beneficial.

Famiglietti and other experts have stressed that preserving groundwater will be crucial for the future of California and other arid Western states. Recent research has shown that global warming, driven by the burning of fossil fuels and rising levels of greenhouse gases, has become a major driver of worsening droughts in the West.

The council noted that irrigation to serve agriculture accounts for about 70% of the nation’s groundwater withdrawals, but offered few specifics about how the federal government could encourage reductions in agricultural water use.

The council suggested providing grants to incentivize “planning, recharge, and sustainable management,” but didn’t provide details. Famiglietti said the government could help by providing incentives for farmers to switch to more efficient irrigation methods, or to grow less water-intensive crops.

Researchers have found that when California farmers are charged more for electricity to run their pumps, they pump less water. These findings show that a tax or fee on water use could help achieve necessary reductions in pumping, said Matt Woerman, a co-author of the research and assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics at Colorado State University.

“There are tons of different ways that you could try to get farmers to extract less water, everything from just putting limits on how much water they’re allowed to use, charging them fees to use this valuable resource, some kind of a subsidy program to use more efficient irrigation infrastructure,” Woerman said.

However, Woerman added that although having federal money directed toward the problem would help, it will be up to local people and agencies to determine which approaches they adopt. Woerman said the council’s recommendations seem like good first steps, but “a lot of the real action is going to have to happen at a more local level.”