I was happy to see it too. Decades ago, for a university course in rhetoric, not even in the state of California, I wrote a senior thesis on groundwater management in Southern California. I loved digging around in libraries, and in the course of my completely enjoyable research I uncovered, among other prizes, a set of reports on that very subject from the RAND think tank in Santa Monica, as well as a quote from John Wesley Powell in a very early issue of National Geographic Magazine stressing the importance of wise development of water resources in the arid southwest. My rhetoric professor was, of course, a non-scientist, but he absolutely LOVED how, with thorough and creative research, I turned an analysis of utilizing, conserving, and recharging ground water resources into a multi-disciplinary social study, with a framework of geology and hydrology holding it together. Should I have pursued the topic into a career? Nah -- then it would have become WORK!
As a landscaper, whenever we get jobs where we have to divert water from the gutter from the house and away from the foundation, we try to keep that water on the property instead of making it flow into the street. We would make “dry creek beds” or depressions in the landscape where water can percolate into the soil rather than run off and be wasted into the storm drains. Every little bit helps!
In Germany you now need to have a way to seep rain water into the ground. Letting it run into the street would be illegal and connecting it to the sewers too. This law is for new homes as many old houses still dump their rain water into the sewers. A sponge city is the new concept of rain water management.
When I converted my California front lawn to plants that don't need irrigation, I added a swale to hold rain water from my and my neighbor's roofs and slowly percolate into the ground. A rough calculation of roof area and the inches of rain my city receives indicates that I'm recharging 2x the amount I use. Note that I only use about 10 gallons a day.
They actually do that here in Southern California where the 605 frwy and 210 frwy meet up especially during Atmospheric Rains they let water run and fill these basins up that run along the San Gabriel river happens year round also even in the summer I've seen.
The reason the focus on reservoirs instead of replenishing aquifers was because how our water laws were written. In the past reservoir water could be charged for. Ground water was considered a property right to the land. Like just pump it up, it's yours right? Will not really. That underground water is connected to all the other water. You pump water on your land and you dry up someone else's water. Of course no incentive to pump water back into the aquifer since someone else will simply pump it out. Finally this has been realized and water is now somewhat being treated as a public resource that needs to managed. Of course some big guys are resistant but the cat is out of the bag now and logic is now forcing the issue. Most likely more law changes will be needed but it appears that CA is on it's way to using it's vast underground water storage ability to deal with droughts and floods.
@@RICDirector problem with reservoirs that have good permeability is the dams that hold these reservoirs have a tendency to fail. This happened with the St Francis dam that Mohan built in Ventura county California. This little oops killed like 3000 people. So far I have not heard of any ground water injection wells killing anyone. Yes it is not as simple as make it. The water injected needs to be filtered and not contaminated. Takes some infrastructure to do this. Still because of the vast quantities of water that can be stored it is worth the investment. Like enough water could be stored for a 20 to 30 year drought which have historically occured in California as well as floods greater than what we have recently experienced.
@@RICDirector and yet no one talks about plugging the hole with big AG using 70% of California water..but lets talk about how much water we dont have...plug the leak first people stop growing unsustainable crops....but its about the money..and I am a 5h generation farming family member..I do know something
What I find fascinating are the low tech methods of permaculture being used to build the Great Green Wall in Africa and many other examples around the world to store water in ground. Slowing down the runoff, allowing the ground and plant life time to absorb the water is not only storage, it also makes forests resistant to wildfires. In Arizona there are stones zig zagging creeks and streams called check dams to slow the water. Beavers can also be valuable partners in creating water storage and fire resistant wetlands.
@@agodelianshock9422 This is true. I still think some swales, check dams and retention ponds would work well in pastures though and provide some drinking water for herds.
The best news I have head in a very long time and I’m from Connecticut where you don’t have a water problem. We still must conserve water the best we can.
And Orange County. Not much of the Santa Ana River, which drains the San Bernardino Mountains, reaches the ocean. Can't imagine many counties have not been doing this. Glad to see advancement continuing. It'll take massive tech to corral the Sierra runoff.
Hasnt been done as much in agriculture until more recently. I remember seeing uc davis do a pilot project where some fields were partially flooded to recharge groundwater. The issue is finding which crops can tolerate a standing water and which cant
@@-fred It could be they brought this out in the news as many people keep on criticizing the fact the water still flows out to the ocean. Which has to happen for rivers to flow and to maintain the Delta.
You can’t compare LA to Northern California, LA border line desert, the Sacramento/ Northern California is California water support forest, grass lands and tons of lakes, not to mention the mountains, for the longest lakes and reservoirs is all we needed. If Northern Cali cut off water support to So Cal than we wouldn’t be needing to take these measures.
My compliments to Richard Sharp for an important and informative news segment. I learned quite a bit about ground water recharge in California... that illustration with the bucket and the trash bins was inspired. Also I didn't know about that helicopter borne soil permeability radar... cool! .
💐 This water conservation is intelligent conduct and has positive impacts on the California environment and future water resources for thousands of people of California, this is good thinking ! Thank you for not wasting highly valuable water resources ! Thanks again 😊
What an interesting story and it is great to see that there are smart, creative individuals working for the people of California. It is amazing the solutions we can have for serious problems when we use scientific tools, research and engineering to address issues.
All California Cities & Counties should learn from ORANGE COUNTY! They pioneer under ground storage & have been able to store huge amount of water for the use of county & preventing water shortage during drought season!
Guess they can't do that in parts of the central valley where farmers have over pumped the aquifers so much that the land has sunk, some areas as much as 20 feet, over the years.
Thank you! I live in the Central Valley. The water is being stored under their land so now they own the water. They plant crops that literally have to sit in flooded fields while the smaller towns surrounding the area dry out. The reason why they plant so water intensive crops is because they have an abundance of water.
Um, the state has been withholding water from the central valley farmers, causing drought conditions trying to force them out. You heard the report, there is plenty of water!
@@jaminova_1969 There's plenty of water... NOW. There hasn't been plenty of water for the past few decades. You have a very tiny fraction of the population using up a vast majority of water, then yeah those people (farmers) are going to end up getting cut off first.
@@Mike__B Yes. We had a good start this season. We didn't run the reservoirs down last year after the rainy season finally ended. That huge amount of snow made a tremendous difference.
The Department of Defense pretty much controls all of the farming industry out in California. Sad what they did to all the smaller farmers that were not good enough to be invited into the Department of Defense Gang. Also, with the earth’s temperatures rising, we are going to see more precipitation in California. The days of Droughts for California may be coming to an end soon. The state needs to work on its management of storm runoff. People in California often forget that 30 days or more of continuous light rain causes massive landslides, debris flows, properties sinking and so on. It might be a good idea to put this groundwater recharging on the back burner and just letting the Aquifer fill up naturally the percolation method filters the water, That way we can make sure the ground water doesn’t get contaminated by pumping dirty water straight into the aquifers.The truth is there’s plenty of groundwater all over the state to supply Southern California water needs.
It's about frickin time, I moved to another state 3 years ago, and a few years before I moved, California had much flooding, so much so, a dam in northern California cracked and had to be fixed. They had to let mega tons of water out into the ocean. I thought, we have more drought seasons than too much water, why on earth, would this water go to waste. So glad some parts of California has now erected a plan to save much needed water. 👍👍
Yes. They've been there but the we didn't really hear much about the replenishing of the underground aquifers last year. There was a bit of news about how some water was diverted to let it soak into the ground. But the example the news showed in this news clip wasn't done before.
California has millions of miles of agricultural drainage ditches and cannels. Why not fill them all to the brim during the rainy seasons instead of letting that water go back out into the ocean?
I like how the media always shows homes as water users..when residents and businesses in California and in most of the west use only 7% of the water, and AG uses 70% growing water thirsty crops that are unsustainable over time as we have seen, and the state does nothing to limit the types of crops grown, plug the leak first, before worrying about storage, but its all about $$ we will never have enough water for AG, we dont have a shortage of water we have mis management...
Don't forget about these Morons that think Desal plants are the solution. Homeowners would be paying a premium for that water while Ag would just add extra acreage for that "new water" desal plants would create.
That's a skewed way of looking at water usage... Who is consuming those products from the farms? No one? Maybe those people in the houses? Food production in this culture is misunderstood and abused by many people.
l like how you snivel about everything and blame gummint at the drop of a hat... If you have a better idea or improvement, by all means, bring it forward to be implemented.
I think Orange County CA where I live has been doing this for years, both by using the Santa Ana River bed as a very long settling pond and by pumping water into the aquifer. California is routinely bashed in the comment sections of many water related videos. The basic idea of the bashing is that California isn't doing enough to stop water from flowing into the ocean. Most of those comments ignore the fact that California has one of the most sophisticated water storage and distribution systems in the world. And that most of California's water is used for agriculture which takes place mostly in what is a desert. They also ignore the increased use of water storage in the aquifers and the recent introduction of using flood waters to flood orchards which helps recharge the ground water under them.
They've been doing this near me for decades. When there is a lot of rain they divert a lot of water into abandoned quarry pits near me and have kept our local aquifer full in Fremont using inflatable dams on Alameda Creek.
SoCal has underground storage with more capacity than Shasta Lake called Bunker Hill Basin, nearly 6 million-acre feet of capacity. A recent funding is working to make that storage more useable.
How do you keep the fresh water your pumping into the aquifer from becoming contaminated from the old Aerojet facility and the old Union rail yard downtown
I do this on my farm. We had a big rainfall in January and I diverted flood water from 50 acres and allowed it to flow into my pond. There was 8 feet of water in my pond then. It is March and now the pond only has one foot of water. I wonder if the water seeped into the ground or did the sun evaporate it. The Asian Indians have big projects to divert and replenish water into aquifers. I am glad the California people are doing the same. 🙂
In Orange County California we have been recharging the water table for decades, the Santa Anna river has been engineered with cemented rocks on the sides to prevent erosion while the sandy bottom is routinely bulldozed to slow the water allowing for sewage into the ground. In addition their are a series of "lakes" along the river that take excess water and also support recharging. These lakes are also great for the migrating bird populations and hundreds of Pelicans, Canadian Honkers and other water birds use these lakes.
Excellent beginning to the awareness that Mother Nature has a billion ways of interconnectedness to sustain life... Let us become part of that solution... It's called 'Permaculture', and is gathering momentum every year... Farmers are intimately connected to the Earth. Urban city dwellers, not so much. So this is for them.
We’ve been doing this in the Central Valley for a long time. Especially here in Fresno County. There’s hundreds of reservoirs around the Fresno/Clovis/Madera that are used to store rain wanted and then pump water underground. We have some MASSIVE aquifers and wells around here. When hit we are sadly the first to be told by the state government to be frugal with water so that water can go to SoCal
Yes. Too often the water is used to go to Southern Cal. The government wants to keep the economic engine going by having Southern Cal continuing to grow.
It's good to see that so much research has been done to improve the underground storage. Everyone keeps on crying about the water that flows out to the ocean. Some of that flow is out of necessity.
What happens when you keep injecting and taking out groundwater in huge quantities from these layers? Wouldn't the layers underneath us weaken over time?
We need something like this in Texas. Most of the state and especially Austin for the past several years is experiencing record breaking droughts. Even here in Houston where it rains than most cities in Texas.
I love hearing good news about progress. America is far from dying!!!!! I do think it would be good to build more above-ground reservoirs as well... It creates habitat that was lost due to the overdevelopment.
Hmmm...they may be catching on but it also may be that you are catching up. The central valley has had recharging basins for decades, if not longer. Farmers know what needs to be done. That helicopter thing was pretty rad though.
Awesome story the question I have is is it UV treated to kill bacteria and such? Wouldn't want bacteria coming up in people's wells after we recharged the aquifers with water that has surface bacteria in it making people sick.
2000 acre feet is not much. The DWR LIDAR mapping is great. Now, I identify the locations from water recharge. Build the canal to deliver excess seasonal runoff to those locations. Build the "spreading grounds" to accept the water for percolation. There are model sites in CA that have been spreading and recharging water for at least 100 years. My home water district in VenturaCounty spread well over 100,000 acre feet of water last year into about these ~100 year old spreading grounds above sand and gravel formations along the Santa Clara River. The Davis/Woodland Water District has also been designed to pump filtered/treated water into the aquifers at significant nt volumes as water is available. Just flooding a fields is not effective unless there is a geological permeation zone that connects with the aquifers used for water wells.
Uhhhh. Yes... So? Humans have shit on Mother nature since the dawn of civilization... Long past time to wake up and get with the program to become a partner, and not an enemy.
LA Santa Monica has turned the entire road gride of storm drain 8 ft pipes into water reclamation...every street in Santa Monica has 8ft concrete pipe to store water...they release it into the wetlands during heavy rains...
Great story. It sounds like a complicated puzzle. Hopefully they can connect under the "concrete rivers" that we have, such as the LA River, to keep some of the water that drains into the ocean.
My Farms doing it into a gravel bottom pond goes right to wells in the area. They came up quite a bit last year. With weeks of running. Now, with our runoff and canal water running 24/7. Turned off during storm as pond was going to flood out. Now is running again. Boss has great.pics and is water dist. Pres. Knows exactly what's going on too.
It's technically challenging to get water back into the aquifer at scale. This report makes it sound like we just need a psychological change. Recharging the aquifer is worth the effort, but it does require costly infrastructure.
Fantastic! I think that one natural method is to dig ditches to catch water before it runs off. They might call this ditch digging to salvage water "Swales". Salvaging water, Purifying water, and Storing water are gigantic challenges.
Rather than trying to get a crazy train built that will cost hundreds of millions, this is what California should be focusing on: the basics - water and power. Those are the key building blocks that make for a better Golden State. Groundwater recharge is a great way to hold on to water resources depleted by farming, and more nuclear power will actually lead to the greener infrastructure where all things can be powered by electricity rather than natural gas or coal, which should serve as peaker resources rather than as base load.
This is all lovely feel good pap. The aquifers are decades overdrawn and many have compacted so much they can't be dehydrated. It would take as many decades of "reversing the pumps" as it has taken to get where we are today, in order to restore the aquifers. And this narrative about storm runoff being "wasted" is more of the consumptive mind set. Humans have simply exceeded Earth's carrying capacity.
It sounds too good to be true. Where I live in the Central Valley, we have so much subsidence that whole communities have been lost. I hope this will work. We have also had to close city wells because of agricultural contaminated runoff. I dont know how replenishing the aquifer will be affected by those contaminates.
If the water isn’t slowly seeping and filtering back into the ground from the top down, how does a large pump inject water back into an aquifer without cutting/eroding a giant cavern or sinkhole?
Ive been calling for using injection wells and recharge basins to recharge aquifers for decades. The big problem will be zero risk regulators that will want to ensure the water going in is totally pure. Ive also been calling for point of use treatment instead of pump and treat to address contamination because it has a much lower cost, lower carbon footprint and doesn’t waste treated groundwater that is often discharged into surface water bodies or sewers
This is the kind of reporting I would like to see everyday. Thank you
Stupid idea. Why not just store the water above ground in tanks?
@@guyfawkesuThe1u missed the entire video. Rewatch it for your answer
@@guyfawkesuThe1Water Tanks/Towers and Enclosed Reservoirs have been a thing for a long time now. Please do catch up!
@@Zorbino88Yes they make more sense than pumping water back into the ground!
@@guyfawkesuThe1 ...because its useless in trying to educate ignorant people like you how nature works
That was one of the most interesting news stories I’ve seen in a long time
I was happy to see it too. Decades ago, for a university course in rhetoric, not even in the state of California, I wrote a senior thesis on groundwater management in Southern California. I loved digging around in libraries, and in the course of my completely enjoyable research I uncovered, among other prizes, a set of reports on that very subject from the RAND think tank in Santa Monica, as well as a quote from John Wesley Powell in a very early issue of National Geographic Magazine stressing the importance of wise development of water resources in the arid southwest. My rhetoric professor was, of course, a non-scientist, but he absolutely LOVED how, with thorough and creative research, I turned an analysis of utilizing, conserving, and recharging ground water resources into a multi-disciplinary social study, with a framework of geology and hydrology holding it together. Should I have pursued the topic into a career? Nah -- then it would have become WORK!
As a landscaper, whenever we get jobs where we have to divert water from the gutter from the house and away from the foundation, we try to keep that water on the property instead of making it flow into the street. We would make “dry creek beds” or depressions in the landscape where water can percolate into the soil rather than run off and be wasted into the storm drains. Every little bit helps!
It's illegal to direct water to roadways. Within ten feet.
Or maybe stop building so many houses because in a drought we won't have enough for all the new homes
In Germany you now need to have a way to seep rain water into the ground. Letting it run into the street would be illegal and connecting it to the sewers too. This law is for new homes as many old houses still dump their rain water into the sewers.
A sponge city is the new concept of rain water management.
@@kingfx-ru5gf Frankly, any water used by our homes absolutely pales in comparison to the amount of water used for agriculture and heavy industry
state dependent. Or even county dependent.@@chrisdudman2781
When I converted my California front lawn to plants that don't need irrigation, I added a swale to hold rain water from my and my neighbor's roofs and slowly percolate into the ground. A rough calculation of roof area and the inches of rain my city receives indicates that I'm recharging 2x the amount I use. Note that I only use about 10 gallons a day.
I’ve always wondered why we’ve only focused on reservoirs rather than replenishing our aquifers. This is a no-brainer! Thanks for your reporting!
They actually do that here in Southern California where the 605 frwy and 210 frwy meet up especially during Atmospheric Rains they let water run and fill these basins up that run along the San Gabriel river happens year round also even in the summer I've seen.
The reason the focus on reservoirs instead of replenishing aquifers was because how our water laws were written. In the past reservoir water could be charged for. Ground water was considered a property right to the land. Like just pump it up, it's yours right? Will not really. That underground water is connected to all the other water. You pump water on your land and you dry up someone else's water. Of course no incentive to pump water back into the aquifer since someone else will simply pump it out. Finally this has been realized and water is now somewhat being treated as a public resource that needs to managed. Of course some big guys are resistant but the cat is out of the bag now and logic is now forcing the issue. Most likely more law changes will be needed but it appears that CA is on it's way to using it's vast underground water storage ability to deal with droughts and floods.
Reservoirs, properly placed, help recharge aquifers.
@@RICDirector problem with reservoirs that have good permeability is the dams that hold these reservoirs have a tendency to fail. This happened with the St Francis dam that Mohan built in Ventura county California. This little oops killed like 3000 people. So far I have not heard of any ground water injection wells killing anyone. Yes it is not as simple as make it. The water injected needs to be filtered and not contaminated. Takes some infrastructure to do this. Still because of the vast quantities of water that can be stored it is worth the investment. Like enough water could be stored for a 20 to 30 year drought which have historically occured in California as well as floods greater than what we have recently experienced.
@@RICDirector and yet no one talks about plugging the hole with big AG using 70% of California water..but lets talk about how much water we dont have...plug the leak first people stop growing unsustainable crops....but its about the money..and I am a 5h generation farming family member..I do know something
Richard: terrific reporting from a source I wouldn’t usually look at. Loved the “drop in the bucket” line.
What I find fascinating are the low tech methods of permaculture being used to build the Great Green Wall in Africa and many other examples around the world to store water in ground. Slowing down the runoff, allowing the ground and plant life time to absorb the water is not only storage, it also makes forests resistant to wildfires. In Arizona there are stones zig zagging creeks and streams called check dams to slow the water. Beavers can also be valuable partners in creating water storage and fire resistant wetlands.
i was going to say, where you can, let beavers do their thing, too.
I saw a documentary about how they reintroduced the beavers to an area where drought was and how the repaired the wetlands with their dams.
I wonder if building some swales is cheaper than a multi billion dollar infrastructure project?
@@agodelianshock9422 This is true. I still think some swales, check dams and retention ponds would work well in pastures though and provide some drinking water for herds.
@@agodelianshock9422nope less than quarter of land is for farming. Over half is undeveloped.
The best news I have head in a very long time and I’m from Connecticut where you don’t have a water problem.
We still must conserve water the best we can.
LA county has been doing this for decades. Hard to imagine the rest of the state hasn't
And Orange County. Not much of the Santa Ana River, which drains the San Bernardino Mountains, reaches the ocean. Can't imagine many counties have not been doing this. Glad to see advancement continuing. It'll take massive tech to corral the Sierra runoff.
Hasnt been done as much in agriculture until more recently. I remember seeing uc davis do a pilot project where some fields were partially flooded to recharge groundwater. The issue is finding which crops can tolerate a standing water and which cant
@@-fred It could be they brought this out in the news as many people keep on criticizing the fact the water still flows out to the ocean. Which has to happen for rivers to flow and to maintain the Delta.
gotta replace that oil with something, or else LA will sink into the ocean
You can’t compare LA to Northern California, LA border line desert, the Sacramento/ Northern California is California water support forest, grass lands and tons of lakes, not to mention the mountains, for the longest lakes and reservoirs is all we needed. If Northern Cali cut off water support to So Cal than we wouldn’t be needing to take these measures.
My compliments to Richard Sharp for an important and informative news segment. I learned quite a bit about ground water recharge in California... that illustration with the bucket and the trash bins was inspired. Also I didn't know about that helicopter borne soil permeability radar... cool! .
💐 This water conservation is intelligent conduct and has positive impacts on the California environment and future water resources for thousands of people of California, this is good thinking ! Thank you for not wasting highly valuable water resources ! Thanks again 😊
What an interesting story and it is great to see that there are smart, creative individuals working for the people of California. It is amazing the solutions we can have for serious problems when we use scientific tools, research and engineering to address issues.
Well placed swales on slopes and in basins depending on the porosity of the soils are simple and effective.
This is great! This is the future of smart water management.
It's about time. I'm glad to see this
water omg
Thank you for reporting with clarity😊.
All California Cities & Counties should learn from ORANGE COUNTY! They pioneer under ground storage & have been able to store huge amount of water for the use of county & preventing water shortage during drought season!
Nice job reporting along with imaginative and memorable illustration. Good journalism. Thanks
Guess they can't do that in parts of the central valley where farmers have over pumped the aquifers so much that the land has sunk, some areas as much as 20 feet, over the years.
Thank you! I live in the Central Valley. The water is being stored under their land so now they own the water. They plant crops that literally have to sit in flooded fields while the smaller towns surrounding the area dry out. The reason why they plant so water intensive crops is because they have an abundance of water.
Um, the state has been withholding water from the central valley farmers, causing drought conditions trying to force them out. You heard the report, there is plenty of water!
@@jaminova_1969 There's plenty of water... NOW. There hasn't been plenty of water for the past few decades. You have a very tiny fraction of the population using up a vast majority of water, then yeah those people (farmers) are going to end up getting cut off first.
@@Mike__B Yes. We had a good start this season. We didn't run the reservoirs down last year after the rainy season finally ended. That huge amount of snow made a tremendous difference.
The Department of Defense pretty much controls all of the farming industry out in California. Sad what they did to all the smaller farmers that were not good enough to be invited into the Department of Defense Gang. Also, with the earth’s temperatures rising, we are going to see more precipitation in California. The days of Droughts for California may be coming to an end soon. The state needs to work on its management of storm runoff. People in California often forget that 30 days or more of continuous light rain causes massive landslides, debris flows, properties sinking and so on. It might be a good idea to put this groundwater recharging on the back burner and just letting the Aquifer fill up naturally the percolation method filters the water, That way we can make sure the ground water doesn’t get contaminated by pumping dirty water straight into the aquifers.The truth is there’s plenty of groundwater all over the state to supply Southern California water needs.
I wish them well with this! It’s needed 🙏🏾🙏🏾
Great news from California....with support from Ohio.
Just fill up and expand Tule Lake and keep it filled.
This is amazing. I hope we as a state do more of this!
Great segment! Definitely worth talking about.
You should also cover the canals and reservoirs with solar to prevent evaporation....
It's about frickin time, I moved to another state 3 years ago, and a few years before I moved, California had much flooding, so much so, a dam in northern California cracked and had to be fixed. They had to let mega tons of water out into the ocean. I thought, we have more drought seasons than too much water, why on earth, would this water go to waste. So glad some parts of California has now erected a plan to save much needed water. 👍👍
So much information in just 4 minutes thank you
this has been done in Nevada for thirty years.
Very cool! Like the effort put into this piece!
Great report. From south San Francisco, thank you
What a wonderfully simple idea to conserve water - these communities are doing a great proactive job to solve a major problem.
Very informative and timely! Keep up the good work!
We have huge retention ponds between Ventura and Oxnard that help replenish the groundwater, they've been there for a while!
Yes. They've been there but the we didn't really hear much about the replenishing of the underground aquifers last year. There was a bit of news about how some water was diverted to let it soak into the ground. But the example the news showed in this news clip wasn't done before.
More stories like these please!
This is incredible! I love technology and science!
John Steinbeck would be flipping out right now.
That huge electromagnetic device made me think of the water stick from East of Eden, lol.
California has millions of miles of agricultural drainage ditches and cannels. Why not fill them all to the brim during the rainy seasons instead of letting that water go back out into the ocean?
Evaporation
Cover the channels with solar panels... Cool the water, slow the evaporation, harvest the power. @@TB-ModelRR
Gravity
I like how the media always shows homes as water users..when residents and businesses in California and in most of the west use only 7% of the water, and AG uses 70% growing water thirsty crops that are unsustainable over time as we have seen, and the state does nothing to limit the types of crops grown, plug the leak first, before worrying about storage, but its all about $$ we will never have enough water for AG, we dont have a shortage of water we have mis management...
Don't forget about these Morons that think Desal plants are the solution. Homeowners would be paying a premium for that water while Ag would just add extra acreage for that "new water" desal plants would create.
That's a skewed way of looking at water usage... Who is consuming those products from the farms? No one? Maybe those people in the houses? Food production in this culture is misunderstood and abused by many people.
l like how you snivel about everything and blame gummint at the drop of a hat... If you have a better idea or improvement, by all means, bring it forward to be implemented.
Without agriculture producing food you won’t eat. If you don’t eat you starve. If you starve you don’t need homes.
I've seen a thing on Vox about this. in some areas, they pay farmers to NOT plant crops and have them rotate to something less water intensive.
This is so cool! Thanks for sharing this
Brilliant work!
I think Orange County CA where I live has been doing this for years, both by using the Santa Ana River bed as a very long settling pond and by pumping water into the aquifer.
California is routinely bashed in the comment sections of many water related videos. The basic idea of the bashing is that California isn't doing enough to stop water from flowing into the ocean. Most of those comments ignore the fact that California has one of the most sophisticated water storage and distribution systems in the world. And that most of California's water is used for agriculture which takes place mostly in what is a desert. They also ignore the increased use of water storage in the aquifers and the recent introduction of using flood waters to flood orchards which helps recharge the ground water under them.
Yes, the Santa Ana Valley project and Bunker Hill Basin will store more runoff than Shasta Lake, just not in the news cycle much.
Isn’t that what they call a watershed?
A watershed is the area that a river gets all of its water from.
You know they have been doing this for years
They've been doing this near me for decades. When there is a lot of rain they divert a lot of water into abandoned quarry pits near me and have kept our local aquifer full in Fremont using inflatable dams on Alameda Creek.
This is awesome!
Finally we're starting to get it! this is a step in the right direction!
Great feature! More positive news! 🙏
This is great, underwater storage is the best way, since it prevents land sinking as well as avoiding evaporation. Lets go California!
SoCal has underground storage with more capacity than Shasta Lake called Bunker Hill Basin, nearly 6 million-acre feet of capacity. A recent funding is working to make that storage more useable.
Thats the Way “ Mother Nature” used to do it..... store all the Extra ... Under ground....
Mother nature still does it... It's simply time to recognize that fact and begin to help her.
How do you keep the fresh water your pumping into the aquifer from becoming contaminated from the old Aerojet facility and the old Union rail yard downtown
Great presentation
Great initiative 🙏
Arizona should try this
they do.
I do this on my farm. We had a big rainfall in January and I diverted flood water from 50 acres and allowed it to flow into my pond. There was 8 feet of water in my pond then. It is March and now the pond only has one foot of water. I wonder if the water seeped into the ground or did the sun evaporate it. The Asian Indians have big projects to divert and replenish water into aquifers. I am glad the California people are doing the same. 🙂
In Orange County California we have been recharging the water table for decades, the Santa Anna river has been engineered with cemented rocks on the sides to prevent erosion while the sandy bottom is routinely bulldozed to slow the water allowing for sewage into the ground. In addition their are a series of "lakes" along the river that take excess water and also support recharging. These lakes are also great for the migrating bird populations and hundreds of Pelicans, Canadian Honkers and other water birds use these lakes.
Excellent beginning to the awareness that Mother Nature has a billion ways of interconnectedness to sustain life... Let us become part of that solution... It's called 'Permaculture', and is gathering momentum every year... Farmers are intimately connected to the Earth. Urban city dwellers, not so much. So this is for them.
We’ve been doing this in the Central Valley for a long time. Especially here in Fresno County. There’s hundreds of reservoirs around the Fresno/Clovis/Madera that are used to store rain wanted and then pump water underground. We have some MASSIVE aquifers and wells around here. When hit we are sadly the first to be told by the state government to be frugal with water so that water can go to SoCal
Yes. Too often the water is used to go to Southern Cal. The government wants to keep the economic engine going by having Southern Cal continuing to grow.
Very nice salute to people of the Great America.
Good 👍 forward thinking! 🎉
Roseville, great city.
That is amazing.
It's good to see that so much research has been done to improve the underground storage. Everyone keeps on crying about the water that flows out to the ocean. Some of that flow is out of necessity.
I've lived in Roseville for a year while working at HP.
What happens when you keep injecting and taking out groundwater in huge quantities from these layers? Wouldn't the layers underneath us weaken over time?
I like the giant water witcher on the helicopter.
We need something like this in Texas. Most of the state and especially Austin for the past several years is experiencing record breaking droughts. Even here in Houston where it rains than most cities in Texas.
Lot more states need to look into doing this.
I love hearing good news about progress. America is far from dying!!!!! I do think it would be good to build more above-ground reservoirs as well... It creates habitat that was lost due to the overdevelopment.
So will those areas that have been sinking due to draining of aquifers pop back up again ?
I think it's an excellent idea to recharge and replenish the aquifers.
Hmmm...they may be catching on but it also may be that you are catching up. The central valley has had recharging basins for decades, if not longer. Farmers know what needs to be done.
That helicopter thing was pretty rad though.
Awesome story the question I have is is it UV treated to kill bacteria and such? Wouldn't want bacteria coming up in people's wells after we recharged the aquifers with water that has surface bacteria in it making people sick.
Love it❤
What about things that aren't currently treated like PFAS and microplastics? Do these get introduced into the aquifer too?
Yes
those things area already in the aquifers, hell we have found microplastics in sediment layers dating back to the 1700!
2000 acre feet is not much. The DWR LIDAR mapping is great. Now, I identify the locations from water recharge. Build the canal to deliver excess seasonal runoff to those locations. Build the "spreading grounds" to accept the water for percolation. There are model sites in CA that have been spreading and recharging water for at least 100 years. My home water district in VenturaCounty spread well over 100,000 acre feet of water last year into about these ~100 year old spreading grounds above sand and gravel formations along the Santa Clara River. The Davis/Woodland Water District has also been designed to pump filtered/treated water into the aquifers at significant nt volumes as water is available. Just flooding a fields is not effective unless there is a geological permeation zone that connects with the aquifers used for water wells.
Revolutionary. Wait hasn't mother nature been doing this since the dawn of time?
Uhhhh. Yes... So? Humans have shit on Mother nature since the dawn of civilization... Long past time to wake up and get with the program to become a partner, and not an enemy.
LA Santa Monica has turned the entire road gride of storm drain 8 ft pipes into water reclamation...every street in Santa Monica has 8ft concrete pipe to store water...they release it into the wetlands during heavy rains...
This is hilarious! And they were gods! 😂
Great story. It sounds like a complicated puzzle. Hopefully they can connect under the "concrete rivers" that we have, such as the LA River, to keep some of the water that drains into the ocean.
LA County has a program in place since 2018 and captured 33 billion gallons of runoff in last year's storm season.
My Farms doing it into a gravel bottom pond goes right to wells in the area. They came up quite a bit last year. With weeks of running.
Now, with our runoff and canal water running 24/7. Turned off during storm as pond was going to flood out. Now is running again.
Boss has great.pics and is water dist. Pres. Knows exactly what's going on too.
It's technically challenging to get water back into the aquifer at scale. This report makes it sound like we just need a psychological change. Recharging the aquifer is worth the effort, but it does require costly infrastructure.
Uau amazing system that promises good future managment with water. That should be done in other places to make good use of water.
Fantastic!
I think that one natural method is to dig ditches to catch water before it runs off.
They might call this ditch digging to salvage water "Swales".
Salvaging water, Purifying water, and Storing water are gigantic challenges.
This is great. Engineers are amazing. Just imagine if we put engineers in charge of homelessness and crime instead of politicians.
Rather than trying to get a crazy train built that will cost hundreds of millions, this is what California should be focusing on: the basics - water and power. Those are the key building blocks that make for a better Golden State. Groundwater recharge is a great way to hold on to water resources depleted by farming, and more nuclear power will actually lead to the greener infrastructure where all things can be powered by electricity rather than natural gas or coal, which should serve as peaker resources rather than as base load.
good job
This is all lovely feel good pap. The aquifers are decades overdrawn and many have compacted so much they can't be dehydrated. It would take as many decades of "reversing the pumps" as it has taken to get where we are today, in order to restore the aquifers. And this narrative about storm runoff being "wasted" is more of the consumptive mind set. Humans have simply exceeded Earth's carrying capacity.
No time to start like now.
Super!
The best way to get water into the aquifer is more reservoirs and lots of them and the ability to easily and quickly move water around.
It sounds too good to be true. Where I live in the Central Valley, we have so much subsidence that whole communities have been lost. I hope this will work. We have also had to close city wells because of agricultural contaminated runoff. I dont know how replenishing the aquifer will be affected by those contaminates.
How do they store all that water? They store it in your back yard, like they're doing right now!
but...... if anytime a "treated" water refill turns out to not be treated.... what happens to the otherwise pristine aquifer then?
Finally, water storage and conservation that makes sense. No need more damn dams. Replenish the natural aquifers!
If the water isn’t slowly seeping and filtering back into the ground from the top down, how does a large pump inject water back into an aquifer without cutting/eroding a giant cavern or sinkhole?
Comments when you have time,interest .I need to watch this twice,at least.❤He said "treated water"
The fish are probably happy for the nutrients from the land. 🐠 😊
Y’all did all this just to sneak in the bit about flying around with a giant X-ray to get us to go along with it.
It's a shame that this wasn't done decades ago.
Ive been calling for using injection wells and recharge basins to recharge aquifers for decades. The big problem will be zero risk regulators that will want to ensure the water going in is totally pure. Ive also been calling for point of use treatment instead of pump and treat to address contamination because it has a much lower cost, lower carbon footprint and doesn’t waste treated groundwater that is often discharged into surface water bodies or sewers