When the Wells Run Dry Groundwater Impacts from California’s Exceptional Drought
by Pete Dennehy, Abhishek Singh, and Azita Asadi
When it comes to drought conditions, 2022 was the year of records in California. The 3-year period from water year 2020 through water year 2022 (which ended September 30th) is the driest 3-year period on record, breaking the recent record set by the previous drought from 2013 to 2015. The period from 2001 to 2022, is the driest 22-year period on record in at least 1,200 years, surpassing the severity of the megadrought in the late 1500s1. Over this 22-year period, the state has been in drought nearly half of the past two decades. At the time of writing this article in late 2022, more than 90% of the state was experiencing a severe drought, more than 40% was in the midst of extreme drought, and about 17% was facing exceptional drought conditions (Figure 1). A “triple dip” La Niña, originally expected to last through 2022 and early 2023, portends a drier than average winter for much of the southwest. As a result, communities, environment, and agricultural sectors are facing exceptional challenges from depleted reservoir storage, greater reliance on groundwater pumping, and reduced groundwater recharge. Note: After preparing this article, several atmospheric rivers brought heavy precipitation to much of the state during late December 2022 and early January 2023. With precipitation in the Central Valley totaling greater than 200% of normal2, drought outlook has dramatically improved. However, 22 years of largely drought conditions have left a serious water deficit that a single wet year cannot likely reverse.
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2023 Winter Issue
While much of the state has begun to implement Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs) after years of plan preparation, the plans are being tested in the immediate face of this historic drought and the associated difficult groundwater management decisions that must be made to balance supply shortages and the achievement of sustainability. In the past year, DWR has released numerous tools and reports, more than ever before, that make data more transparent and available in real time and are being used to quantify the impacts of drought. These tools include California Groundwater Live, the Dry Well Reporting System, California Data Exchange Center for surface water conditions, and quarterly InSAR subsidence surveys. Dry Wells. DWR’s California Groundwater Live provides real time analysis of groundwater conditions. In October 2022, 64% of monitoring wells in the state had below normal water levels and about 21% of wells were at an all-time low (Figure 2). Declining groundwater levels have caused many wells to go dry, particularly shallow domestic wells. In the last year, about 1,700 dry wells have been reported throughout the state, which is more than any year since the reporting system was launched in 2013 (Figures 3 &4). Because domestic wells are typically shallow, residents in disadvantaged communities with shallow domestic wells as their primary source of water supply, are disproportionately impacted.
When the Wells Run Dry
HydroVisions Official Publication of the Groundwater Resources Association