Sustainable Conservation reposted this
In the water industry, it can be very hard to quantify the impact we're having. How much water did we save through our efforts? How much did we replenish or restore? Are we even making a dent? At Sustainable Conservation, we had a unique opportunity to quantify our organization's impact through a recent report by the Public Policy Institute of California, "Replenishing Groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley: 2024 Update." This report compared groundwater recharge activities between California's two most recent wet years, 2017 and 2023. What caught our attention? 👩🌾 On-farm recharge went from an "experimental" to a "mainstream" practice. 📈 On-farm recharge nearly doubled in 2023 to 493,000 acre-feet, up from 260,000 acre-feet in 2017. 📊 On-farm recharge made up nearly 10% of the total volume of recharge reported. These results are huge to us. Here's why. In 2011, Sustainable Conservation first worked on recharge with an innovative farmer, Don Cameron, who took quite the risk by applying extra water to his fields in an effort to replenish the aquifer beneath. While recharge in dedicated basins was common practice, recharging on active cropland was decidedly NOT. A mere 12 years later, and this innovative practice is considered mainstream and makes up 10% of the region's recharge portfolio. This is especially impressive given how much was overcome, including policy and legal barriers, risk aversion amongst farmers and water managers, and funding and program development at local, state, and federal levels. Usually, changes in water management happen over generations. This was accomplished in 12 years. I'm new to this team and can take ZERO credit for what Sustainable Conservation achieved with its partners to test and safely scale on-farm recharge. And this impact is EXACTLY why I wanted to join this amazing team. Sustainable Conservation is pragmatic and works with diverse partners to find and scale solutions for California's most pressing water challenges. I am so proud of what my coworkers, and Sustainable Conservation's many partners, have achieved to date -- and I'm very excited for what's in store the next 12 years. 📰 Read more about what we've learned from this report in Ashley Boren's excellent op-ed in the Sacramento Bee.
Very helpful!