The Effects Of Groundwater On California Water Supply Essay

6.The California Water Project takes water from northern California to the south through various means. The two sides have disagreements on how the water should be used. Northern Californians argue that if they sent more water to the south, they would waste it, resulting in the Sacramento River being degraded. However, southern Californians still want more water, because they feel that their growing populations and agricultural needs require the water.

The upper basin states (including Colorado) were allocated a much greater percentage of the water than the lower basin states, while the upper basin states were developing at a much slower rate than those in the lower basin, notably California. Nevada (as of 1997) anticipated being unable to rely just on this water by 2015, while in 1997 California was already exceeding its originally allocated supply by diverting unused water from the upper basin states (Arizona.edu, 1997). It goes without saying that this legislation from the early twentieth century is not going to be sufficient in coming years as the development of these regions has progressed at a much faster rate than originally anticipated, and it is the responsibility of state and federal governments, water management companies, as well as appeals from farmers and non-farming residents alike to come to an agreement on how to apportion water and how to implement secondary hydration plans due to the rapidly declining resource that the once-magnificent Colorado River was able to supply us

The Earth is a huge planet this is covered by 70 percent water. Astonishingly from this 70 percent the human population can only use 1 percent of the world’s water the rest of it is salt water, frozen, or in some way unattainable (Santa Clara Valley Water District, 2016). Humans have found many different ways to obtain this 1 percent of fresh water they need, but the techniques vary depending on location. In San Jose, California we obtain our water from 3 major sources: groundwater, imported surface water, and local mountain surface water. These 3 sources contribute different amounts of water to the San Jose community. Imported surface water composes about 50 percent of our water supply, while ground water composes roughly 40 percent, and local mountain surface water composes approximately 10 percent (Santa Jose Water Company, 2016). However, these percentages can change due to factors such as weather and global warming.

440). The main way for most aquifers to be recharged is through surface runoff. The rainfall sinks into the ground and percolates or accumulates to a common place (usually an aquifer). Yet this process takes lots of time. Scientists believe it may take centuries to refill some of the deeper aquifers. Water travels especially slow underground. It could take water up to 500 years to travel 15 meters. Aquifers are depended on for roughly 40% of California’s water supply. This number can escalate to 60% during droughts such as the one that just occurred.

In my opinion, the affordable water solution includes two main directions: Taps new resource and reduces expenses of water. There are many ways to create the new water resource and the feasible methods are 1. Building desalination plants 2. Building new the dams 3. Rain harvesting system. California has very long coastline and it provides the very great opportunity to utilize sea water to generate drinking water by desalination plants. NBC news “Solutions to California's Water Crisis from Half a World Away” showed the interesting comparing data between California and Israel in table 1 [2]. The desalination plants will contribute large amount of water to California’s drought. We need to consider if low snowpack and high temperature will happen frequently in the future, this is a right time to make a foresight plan to build the desalination plants. If the weather is still drought, agriculture must pump more water away from aquifer. There is not only the land is sinking but also influence the eco system.

Envision yourself, about to complete a straightforward, everyday thing such as washing the dishes, suddenly to your surprise there is no water coming out of the faucet. Well for the civilians of East Porterville this is their reality. California has always had very lenient and ineffective groundwater regulations. Today, this has become a major issue, especially with California's severe drought. The regulation of the aquifer is a necessity because cleanliness is a basic human right and by not regulating the groundwater and leaving civilians with no working water, that right is taken away. The right to bathe, wash your hands, and have a working toilet is simply no more. Furthermore there are scientific statements, proving that excessively pumping groundwater will lower the water levels, which will likely lead to the land level sinking as well.

A major problem in Southern California is that Los Angeles experiences very little rain all year, followed by intense downpours that last less than one day (53). Its unreliable rainfall severely hurts the region. In Northern California, mountains such as the Sierra Nevada allow for a huge range in rainfall over a short distance. “…a place on the western slope of the range may receive eighty or so inches of precipitation in a year, while a place on the east slope, fifty miles away, may receive ten inches or less” (58).

My opinion is that California should not regulate groundwater because of farmers and financially. A Farmer would need more water for their crops, animals , accordingly themselves. That is a large amount of water , I do not think that is fair because what would happen if the farmers ran out of water ;they would have to use other residents water. Farmers would have to buy less pickups,employing less people, moreover buying less tractors.In source 1 it says that “the Farmers feel very disconnected with the

Sierra Nevada snowpack provide 75 percent to 80 percent of California’s freshwater, and as a result of the increasing temperature, the Sierra snowpack was only 14 percent of normal in February, 2014.3 The lack of water also causes more wildfires.

California has been in a terrible drought, if we keep doing this it’s just going to get worse. The State of California should have groundwater regulations. Hydrologists are showing charts of how the water keeps lowering over time. Having regulations on groundwater not only will save money, it will save time, and it will help the

California has just come out of it’s 5th year of drought. In the last 5 years California has had record high temperatures and record low rain and snow. Even though they say the drought is over our groundwater levels are still down because of overpumping. Overpumping has been happening for 50 to 70 years. To me that is a really long time to overuse our water. Groundwater pumping is taking water from the ground. Most of the people using groundwater are farmers so their crops can grow in dry conditions (drought). Groundwater pumping is taking away from future water reserves which is the water we have to use during a drought. If we keep pumping groundwater out of the ground and don’t put it back in to replace it then it is a very bad use of a very valuable resource. California is lucky that state lawmakers are now beginning to try and regulate how groundwater is monitored and managed. The point of doing this is to try to find a better way to use our valuable resource.Fresh water is one of the basic needs of all living things.California needs to limit the amount of groundwater used by recycling wastewater and

Due to the lack of rain in the past few years, and particularly in the last few months, California faces severe drought. This is the worst drought in more than one hundred years. The impact of California drought affects community, agriculture, organic ranchers, and dairy farmers. Because of these facts, the United States must rethink the way it uses water. Californians alone are asked to reduce their water usage by twenty percent to prevent water waste.

I have researched the effect of climate change on California’s natural water supply. California has a diverse climate throughout, being a large state with sixteen different climate zones recognized. These can be subdivided into four major climatic zones as follows: North Coast, South Coast, Central Valley, and Desert/Mountain.

Currently California is facing a water shortage. The issue has been addressed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in February. He called for all state agencies to find the way to help in the statewide water shortage. This is California’s third consecutive year of drought and last spring and summer was the worst of the season because it had the lowest amount of water recorded and California’s reservoirs were at their lowest point as well which did not help in the water shortage. Many agencies have been acquired to find possible solutions to the water shortage, the Department of Water Resources has been directed to find solutions to the problem as well as asking people to conserve water.

A major source of water for California is the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. However, the drought has greatly affected snows accumulation and in 2015 we are seeing the worst situation over the past 500 years. The author of an article published in Nature Climate Change describes, “The snowpack is really important in California because of the Mediterranean climate. There is no precipitation in the summer. The only time they are going to get precipitation is those winter months” . Therefore, California must adapt their water resource processes to assume less snowpack melt into reservoirs.