Five years ago, public entities within the Owens Valley aquifer joined in on the development of a groundwater sustainability plan dictated by the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Act. It’s been a bumpy ride that seems to have ended with the majority of what became the Owens Valley Groundwater Agency pulling out once the coveted Groundwater Sustainability Plan was developed. As complex as that process was, the uncoupling of the OVGA is even more complex.
The exodus started when the groundwater basin was downgraded from medium to low priority
mid-stream in the process. Low priority basins pretty much don’t have to do anything, but the multi-county, multi-agency OVGA already had a $700,000 grant to develop the plan; so it did.
Development of the plan involved a lot of information gathering on the existing water table
levels, a task made somewhat easier within Inyo County due to the existence of the Water Department and its routine of evaluating the water table’s status. The one sticking point was the Tri-Valley Groundwater Management District, encompassing Chalfant, Benton and Hammil Valley. From Inyo’s perspective, the TVGMD was the toughest nut to crack. From Tri-Valley’s perspective, the wells supported agriculture. Since farmers and ranchers were dependent on a sustainable water system, they were the best care-takers of that resource. The major concern among environmentalists was Fish Slough and the endangered species of pup fish. The springs are feed by upward pressure of water from the deeper aquifer.
The last entity to leave the OVGA was Mono County, with an added twist. Mono Supervisors
opted to leave, effective in July, and to form their own GSA to oversee those parts of Tri-Valley not within the TVGMD as well as Long Valley. The inclusion of Long Valley was predicated on concerns Los Angeles Department of Water and Power may opt to drill wells in the area.
The loss of Mono County as part of the OVGA put Inyo County in the awkward position of having to oversee water in Mono County, over which it has no authority.
Aaron Steinwand, Inyo County Water Department head, went before the Inyo Board of
Supervisors last week looking for direction. The conclusion: redraw the OVGA’s boundary at the
Inyo/Mono county line and ask for coordination with Tri-Valley. It could be months before the
Department of Water Resources passes judgement on the plan.
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I’ll have you all know when I stay in Bishop motels I turn on the shower and sink and let the water run down the drain my entire stay. I do this because the Sierrawave news is biased and censors comments.
A couple of comments from a Mono Co. resident. Requiring farmers upstream from Fish Slough to save the pup fish without evaluating the much greater benefit of reductions of LADWP pumping from wells many miles closer is not fair. Yes, DWP wells are downstream of Fish Slough but like a bathtub, both drain from an overflow or a bottom outlet. I would guess that DWP pumps many more acre feet of water than the farmers in Hammil and Benton. And how would you know what percentage of water not pumped in the future by those farmers would actually feed Fish Slough? OVGA surely doesn’t know at this time and they haven’t even ventured a guess in their plan. It seems that they willing to sacrifice Mono County farmers, quality of life, our environment, and a substantial portion of it’s tax base and wait ten years or longer to see if they are right. Sounds to me like very bad government to me. I applaud Mono County and the Tri Valley Groundwater Management District for taking the action they did.
Richard- I appreciate your position, but there are a couple of things that we do know about TriValley groundwater that you are omitting (probably because this is information is not easily summarized). The DWP’s pumping is well monitored, and is usually between 5-10 thousand acre feet/year (Inyo County data); unfortunately, TriValley’s water use is poorly monitored and not reported, but based on total acreage and irrigation season they probably pump between 15-20 thousand acre feet/year… about twice what DWP does.
DWP runs there groundwater operation like a water bank- they spread water in wet years and pump more on dry years- as a result the groundwater levels change dramatically, but they do not go consistently up or down. The farmers in Hammil do not spread water on wet years, and as a result the groundwater table in Hammil Valley is consistently dropping about 2 feet a year (something that carries over to Chalfant Valley, where the water table is dropping between a foot and six inches a year). By looking at the water monitoring data in OVGA’s GSP, the TriValley farmers are doing a much worse job managing water than DWP at this point. A big part of the problem is probably the installation of huge new wells by the Zack Ranch (these logs are available on DWR’s website), but the bottoms of these wells are actually lower than almost all of the DWP wells, and they are capable to pumping more than 6 cfs (this is about what is flowing down Mammoth Creek right now).
I’m not trying to be confrontational, just pointing out that the biggest groundwater problems are probably not in Inyo County and probably not tied to LADWP.