CloseLog InUser NamePasswordRemember MeForgot your Log In info?Create an accountLog InContactNovimSearch...HomeAboutWhat, When, Why & HowMethodologyScience BoardExecutive TeamInformationNovim NewsStudy PapersNewslettersLegal/FinancialProjectsClimate EngineeringSurface TemperatureNatural GasPublic Employee PensionsIPCC Report AnimationWater + EnergyForumDonateAppsRecent Novim NewsOverpumping of Central Valley groundwater creating a crisis, experts sayA simple instrument with a weight and a pulley confirmed what hydrologist Michelle Sneed had suspected after seeing more and more dirt vanish from the base of her equipment each time she returned to her research site last summer. The tawny San Joaquin Valley earth was sinking a half-inch each month.The reason was no mystery. “There are wells up and down this road,” Sneed said, nodding toward a two-lane byway that cut across the flat agricultural landscape.Parts of the San Joaquin Valley are deflating like a tire with a slow leak as growers pull more and more water from the ground. The land subsidence is cracking irrigation canals, buckling roads and permanently depleting storage space in the vast aquifer that underlies California's heartland.The overpumping has escalated during the past drought-plagued decade, driving groundwater levels to historic lows in some places. But in a large swath of the valley, growers have been sucking more water from its sands and clays than nature or man puts back for going on a century.They are eroding their buffer against future droughts and hastening the day, experts warn, when they will be forced to let more than a million acres of cropland turn to dust because they have exhausted their supplies of readily available groundwater.“It's like a bank account. If the money you put in is less than what you're taking out, it's a deficit. How long can you withstand that?” asked supervisory hydrologist Claudia Faunt, who is Sneed's boss at the U.S. Geological Survey.The Central Valley aquifer extends for about 400 miles under the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. The subterranean water, some of which seeped into the ground 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, is California's biggest reservoir. Yet it has been largely unregulated and unmonitored. Most of the more than 100,000 wells that pierce the valley floor are unmetered and landowners have taken what they wanted.Scientists estimate that since the first wells were drilled by settlers more than a century ago, pumping has depleted Central Valley groundwater reserves by 125 million acre-feet. That is about 4 1/2 times the capacity of Lake Mead, the biggest surface reservoir in the country. About 20 million acre-feet of that loss occurred in the last decade.Until last year, California didn't have a statewide groundwater law, making it an outlier in the West. The legislation, intended to end unsustainable groundwater use, won't do that any time soon. Agricultural interests opposed the regulations, which call for the creation of local