Department of Water Resources Releases Drought Response Update Report

This week, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) released a report titled “Public Update for Drought Response” (Report) in response to the Governors’ April 2014 Proclamation of a Continued State of Emergency.  The Report discusses groundwater basins with potential water shortages, gaps in groundwater monitoring, monitoring of land subsidence, and agricultural land fallowing.  

The key findings include:

• Basins with notable decreases in groundwater levels are in the Sacramento River, San Joaquin River, Tulare Lake, San Francisco Bay, Central Coast, and South Coast hydrologic regions;
• For High and Medium priority basins, there are significant gaps in groundwater monitoring for the San Joaquin River, Tulare Lake, and Central Coast hydrologic regions;
• Subsidence is occurring in many groundwater basins in the state, especially in the southern San Joaquin River and Tulare Lake hydrologic regions; and,
• Peak summer acreage of Central Valley land idled (due to drought impacts, normal agronomic practices, crop markets, etc.) in 2014 was 1.7 million acres, almost 700,000 acres more than in 2011, a recent wet year.

The Report can be accessed here.