WATER MINING: A predicted “super” El Niño this winter could put one of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plans to bolster the state’s water supplies to the test just as his governorship winds down. The storms could bring danger, potentially overwhelming levees and causing damaging floods. But they could also give California, where water supplies can swing wildly from drought to flood, a chance to capture and store excess water underground for later use. Groundwater usually makes up roughly 40 percent of the state’s water supplies, and closer to 60 percent during dry years when above ground rivers run dry. But over-pumping by farmers and years of drought have depleted underground reserves. Newsom has tried for the past couple of years to make it easier for water managers to divert floodwaters into underground aquifers as part of his broader efforts to store and send more water to farms and cities, sometimes angering environmentalists who argue it comes at the cost of endangered species. The groundwater recharge effort is also partly a response to President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly accused California of wasting water by letting floodwater flow to the Pacific Ocean instead of sending it to farmers, some of his most stalwart supporters in the state. “Under normal conditions, a water rights user wouldn’t be authorized to take more than their allocated amount of water out of a river or conveyance facility, but during floods, you want to encourage that,” Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said in an interview this month. “We’re doing a lot of preparation with our water agencies for this winter.” So far, though, Newsom’s efforts have yielded mixed results. A coalition of local elected officials and water managers from Orange County to Tulare County urged Newsom last week in a letter to urgently issue an executive order this year to clear bureaucratic hurdles, like environmental review requirements, that stand in the way of groundwater recharge or that could make flood damage worse. And state regulators also warned on Wednesday that the state needs to do more now to make the most of the likely wet winter and hit Newsom’s targets for underground storage. Amanda Montgomery, a permitting manager for State Water Resources Control Board’s Division of Water Rights, told the California Water Commission that environmental requirements are a “challenge” for water agencies wanting to divert floodwaters for groundwater recharge. Newsom has taken the executive order path before: After he issued an executive order in 2023 to waive some environmental rules to get more water underground during California’s last big wet year, the Department of Water Resources reported that water managers diverted more than 400,000 acre-feet of floodwater to recharge aquifers under the new policy. But that was only a drop in the bucket: California’s groundwater remained 40 million acre-feet below its levels two decades earlier. And a report by the Northern California Water Association found that only a tiny fraction of the recharge allowed under new State Water Resources Control Board permits actually occurred, largely due to limitations in the permits. A proposal by Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry this year would have extended and expanded streamlined permitting for groundwater recharge, including the temporary diversions of floodwaters. But the bill, AB 2026, was held in the Senate Appropriations Committee despite passing the Assembly unanimously. It was supported by water agencies but opposed by the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife, which said the bill could encourage additional diversions from an already over-appropriated system, threatening water quality, communities and the ecosystem. The group also said the proposal would enshrine “Trump administration policies on water management in the Delta.” Aguiar-Curry said she would keep working on the policy. “This is a complex issue, and it will take state funding to reform the permitting processes,” she said in a statement to POLITICO this week. “We know today that our groundwater recharge permitting process needs to be improved to make sure stakeholders can get through the permitting process and actually use the permits they have in hand.” Karla Nemeth, the former longtime director of the Department of Water Resources who recently became executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, said the coming storms will likely expose the state’s policy gaps. “I think we are as ready as we can be,” she said in an interview, “but [there’s] more work to be done to get that water saved for a drought.” Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here!
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