Groundwater Recharge Jackson Family Wines Works to Secure Water for Sonoma County’s Future By Tim Tesconi
Saralee’s Vineyard, a sprawling stretch of grapevines planted 40 years ago by the late agriculture visionary Saralee McClelland Kunde, is the field laboratory for an ambitious groundwater recharge project that could play a pivotal role in water security for Sonoma County residents. Jackson Family Wines, which now owns Saralee’s Vineyard, a 300-acre property on Slusser Road near Windsor, is overseeing a project that could provide a blueprint for the replenishment of the aquifers lying below Sonoma County and beyond. The study, started in 2017 and under the direction of hydrology scientist Philip Bachand, captures storm water runoff in the vineyard and allows it to slowly seep back into the aquifer. Instead of flowing to the ocean as winter runoff, the flood water is contained by earthen berms around the vineyard so it can gradually filter through the soil and be stored in the aquifer for future use. Data from probes in the soil show a net increase in the water table of the vineyard that is part of the study. “We are proving that there is a sustainable way to recharge groundwater levels in the aquifer by using our vineyards to absorb and store winter rain,” said Shaun Kajiwara, 34, a vineyard manager for Jackson Family Wines. Kajiwara and his wife, Katie Jackson, who is a member of the Jackson family and the vice president for sustainability and external affairs at her family’s Santa Rosa wine company, are overseeing the groundwater recharge program and other environmental projects, like carbon sequestration, that will help combat the impacts of climate change. The Jackson Family takes climate change seriously in planning for their farming future. While California’s groundwater reserves have been dwindling for the last century, the idea of recharge surfaced with the passage of the state’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. The Act says new public agencies must develop plans to ensure the state’s groundwater basins are stablized, including in the Petaluma Valley, Santa Rosa Plain and Sonoma Valley. It gives the new agencies the authority to assess fees and limit water pumped by larger well owners. The act offered systematic recharge of farm fields as one solution to falling underground water levels, and Jackson Family Wines took up the challenge, devoting time and resources to the feasibility of groundwater recharge on Sonoma County farmland. They will share their information with the Sonoma County Water Agency and other government
Sonoma Country has more than 500,000 acres of farmland that offer the potential for recharge sites.
“We are proving that there is a sustainable way to recharge groundwater levels in the aquifer by using our vineyards to absorb and store winter rain.” agencies to move groundwater recharge forward. Studies in the Central Valley by the University of California have found success in raising the level of water tables by flooding alfalfa fields and almond orchards during the winter. There is tremendous potential for local groundwater recharge considering that Sonoma Country has more than 500,000 acres of farmland that offer the potential for recharge sites. Studies will continue on the optimum soil types and topography for the best groundwater recharge. Katie Jackson, along with her siblings and mother Barbara Banke, own and operate Jackson Family Wines, the parent company of Kendall-Jackson wines and many other top brands including LaCrema, which is located at Saralee’s Vineyard. Jackson and her family are positioning their wine business for the generations that will follow, and that means finding solutions to challenges like drought and the diminishing water levels in aquifers across California and the rest of the country. “The reality is that we are focused on affecting change and passing down a business model that is innovative and scientifically based when it comes to land, water and resource management,” said Kajiwara, who holds a degree in biochemistry. Kajiwara and Jackson have three children. Their children are among the next generation of the Jackson family poised to one day take control of the business started by Katie Jackson’s father, the late Jess Jackson, a San Francisco lawyer who turned a weekend hobby vineyard into one of America’s largest family-owned wineries.