36 million acre feet have been pumped out in the last 20 years.
It won’t get back up just with one year’s rain.
Groundwater depletion is also driven by bad wildlands management. When you suppress fire for 100 years and than don’t do anything to reduce bioload you have a massive overgrowth of trees and other vegetation that transpires off water which would otherwise recharge aquifers and run into reservoirs. Total water loss to this likely exceeds the entirety of human use in CA.
One fir tree transpires off 150 gallons a day; one redwood 500 gallons a day. Multiply that by an overgrowth of a couple hundred million of trees. To put things in perspective people in CA use and estimated 38 billion gallons a day (includes agriculture).
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That is less than one year’s consumption
I agree agriculture needs to conserve. Most likely it will no longer be able to compete with overseas competitors due to high labor costs the EPA and conservation measures . Meaning the San Joaquin valley will revert back to desert. We don’t need all the almonds and pistachios grown there … mostly for export
I use drip irrigation on my vines. Use very little water. Only water about 12 days a year. Nut trees take massive amounts of water.
It’s ridiculous that almond production has tripled during our supposed drought. Who likes almonds? .they are dry and flavorless. So they came up with almond milk to push this very limited demand product.
And now almond average is double that of wine grapes
Ironically Almonds are replacing other crops because they use less labor. But unfortunately they use too much water. It might be cheaper to pay them a subsidy to not grow than build more dams . Almonds alone use 10%of all the state’s water. Never mind all the other nuts grown for export. Almonds are so lucrative that grape acreage that use less water are being replaced by almonds.
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We are now in record territory. Probably will exceed 1982/3. This weekend. The next record is the all time 1952 record. 800”
Drought… no way
