Groundwater depletion in California

Photo credit: Scientific American

In California, groundwater deposits are getting saltier as cities and farms extract more water than is replenished naturally, allowing ocean water into the porous aquifers.
Credit: Wonderlane/Flickr

California Farmers Confront Ominous Groundwater Shortage

Drought and saltier aquifers pose threats to the biggest farming state in the U.S.

By Debra Kahn and ClimateWire

California’s perpetual problem of groundwater depletion has gotten so dire that people are actually working to solve it.

In California, groundwater deposits are getting saltier as cities and farms extract more water than is replenished naturally, allowing ocean water into the porous aquifers. One of the worst areas for it is the Pajaro Valley, a small farming community near Santa Cruz. In a state that has long touted itself as the nation’s No. 1 agricultural producer, the seawater has worked its way into groundwater deposits roughly 3 miles inland from the coast.

Water experts and state officials were in a conference room at the corporate headquarters of massive berry grower Driscoll’s in Watsonville last week to discuss the issue and try to amplify it.

“The state of California has to deal with groundwater, or we’re going to ruin this state,” said Miles Reiter, CEO of Driscoll’s, which has operations in six states as well as Argentina, Canada, Chile and Mexico.

Driscoll’s executives are uncommonly frank about the hard realities California is faced with because they are unavoidable in the Pajaro Valley, which gets more than 90 percent of its water from groundwater.

Some farmers in the valley are already at the point where their groundwater water is too saline to use.

Read the full article: Scientific American