California drought is depleting the state's groundwater reserves

Nervousness over California's epic drought has given way to alarm, reported Joby Warrick in the Washington Post. Streams and lakes are drying up, and now the aquifers are being pumped at an unsustainable rate.

The massive shift to groundwater has helped farmers survive this year, but a UC Davis study says tapping groundwater at the same rate into the future could soon deplete this valuable resource.

"A well-managed basin is used like a reserve bank account," said Richard Howitt, professor emeritus in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis. "We're acting like the super rich who have so much money they don't need to balance their checkbook."

Thomas Harter, UC Cooperative Extension groundwater specialist in the Department of Land, Air and Water at UC Davis, said depleting the aquifer is more serious than depleting water reservoirs because aquifers take far longer to replenish.

"It's a downward path," he said. "We cannot do what we did this year on a permanent basis."

Huntington Lake, a reservoir in the Sierra Nevada, is at about one-third of its capacity. In this July 2014 photo, the basin is also shrouded in smoke from a nearby forest fire.

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