Unrelenting groundwater use diminished farmers' ability to tap the resource during drought

The water shortage being experienced by farmers today is a manifestation of years of imprudent, unchecked groundwater pumping, and not solely due to the current drought, is not the most severe, reported the Christian Science Monitor.

"This drought has brought home to more people the truth that California is a dry place and we are not going to have all the water we want,” said Jay Lund, professor of civil and environmental engineering at University of California-Davis and director of its Center for Watershed Sciences.

According to Lund, limiting the use of groundwater in wetter years allows replenishment of groundwater basins, would allow municipalities and farms to later draw upon them during drought conditions.

Doug Parker, director of the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources California Water Resources Institute, concurred. He said the exhaustion of aquifers during non-drought years has meant that, under the current circumstances, farmers have had to drill ever-deeper to access water. But greater depths mean a more expensive process, leaving lower-income farmers at a disadvantage.

Farmers benefit from direct contact with the universities' extension officers, who advise them on best practices.

The UC ANR Cooperative Extension, for example, has hosted over 150 workshops totaling over 10,000 attendees, said Parker, who also noted that the UC system has been addressing water issues since 1880.

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