Home section

Water for the Future

Recharging Groundwater

What a difference a year makes! From the parched spring of 2016 to the incessant downpours of this past winter, we Californians have been put through our hydrological paces.

Our Golden State infrastructure, food systems, and communities pivoted from painstakingly considering every drop to coping with extraordinary volumes of rain and snow. The past 18 months have laid bare what we face in terms of our variable, changing climate.

Thanks to your support in 2016, we were able to take swift action to make sure California can safely meet the drought and downpour fluctuations in our long-term forecast.

You have helped demonstrate the potential to replenish taxed groundwater basins by diverting flood flows from storm-filled rivers onto active cropland. There, excess precipitation can percolate down to revive subterranean stores – saving downstream communities from flooding, caching water for confronting future droughts, and keeping vital farmland in production. We’re honored to evolve this solution with folks like Don Cameron (General Manager/Vice President of Terranova Ranch in Helm, Calif., pictured above), a farming pioneer who shares our goal: in Don’s own words, to “get water on the ground and move it down.”

(Page 1 of 4)

Expanding Minds, Acreage

With groundwater recharge, there is no “one-size-fits-all.” Given differing soil and crop types, and varying levels of risk aversion, we need data on our side to spur adoption of this on-farm solution. Your 2016 donations helped us develop our Groundwater Recharge Assessment Tool (GRAT) in partnership with The Earth Genome, an organization focused on translating big data for decision making on our changing planet. The geospatial scenario testing software will assist local Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) in identifying the best-bang-for-the-buck recharge options from a mix of different methods: via active cropland (like almond orchards – see above), fallow land, and/or dedicated recharge basins (click forward to our Basin to Basin story). Under California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, GSAs are tasked with implementing plans to keep regional groundwater basins in balance.

Figuring out ways to regularly replenish and avoid over-pumping these subterranean stores will be critical to meeting state-mandated goals. This spring (2017), the Madera and Tulare irrigation districts are field-testing and refining the tool prototype – to boost confidence in this approach in their depleted regions of the San Joaquin Valley and encourage widespread use of the tool in the future.

(Page 2 of 4)

Proof of Concept

We’re keeping a close eye on the progress of demonstration sites we lined up in 2016 – additional pavers on the path to our goal of on-farm groundwater recharge as a recognized business practice. Right now, there are around a half million acres of almonds on California soil suitable for recharge – to say nothing of other crop types! Thanks to your help, we’re not only working with almonds, but now also wine grapes, walnuts, and pistachios. Monitoring these sites (see monitoring equipment installation above) for crop response to recharge with our trusted university and laboratory partners, and passing on lessons learned, provides key assurances to interested farmers.

Data collected from such a diverse group of sites will provide an enormous step forward in promoting adoption of this paradigm-shifting water replenishment method. We will synthesize and share the data with growers, and use it to augment our Groundwater Recharge Assessment Tool (GRAT) with real-world information. The data we collect about the amount of water recharged on different crops will also provide state-mandated local Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) with evidence for developing their game plans to achieve greater balance in groundwater basins under their jurisdiction.

(Page 3 of 4)

Basin to Basin

Groundwater recharge can take different forms, and you help ensure the full suite is in play to bolster California’s water supply for the future. Depending on soil composition, dedicated recharge basins – picture massive bathtubs sculpted from earth – can be a cost-effective option for replenishing our Golden State aquifers. In June 2016, we and our partners – the California Department of Water Resources, Laguna Irrigation District, and Kings Basin Water Authority, with financial support from Coca-Cola – celebrated the completion of a 52-acre recharge basin in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley (see ribbon-cutting event, inset above, with Sustainable Conservation Senior Manager of Conservation Incentives Kelli McCune at far left).

Storms at the beginning of 2017 put the basin to work, filling it with flood flows from the nearby Kings River (see main photo above). Captured water seeps into the soil to give the aquifer below a much-needed refill. Over time, this means more reliable drinking water for local communities and a steady water supply for local farms that feed the nation, as well as decreased flood risk for downstream communities.

Learn more:

• Working with agriculture to recharge California’s groundwater supplies
• One key way soggy California could save water for the next dry spell (Los Angeles Times)
• Webcast of panel convened by Sustainable Conservation at the Public Policy Institute of California: “Conversations from the Field: How Much Water Does the Environment Need?”
• Alliance unveils project to restore groundwater in Central Valley

(Page 4 of 4)

Accelerating Restoration

Water and Wildlife

Tension between California water users and environmental protection escalated in 2016. With the California State Water Resources Control Board calling for increased flows in the San Joaquin River and its tributaries, agricultural and urban communities are ready to sue. Our state’s dwindling fish and wildlife populations don’t have time to see how these courtroom battles shake out.

Your support of Sustainable Conservation’s initiative to pick up the pace of badly needed habitat restoration and enhancement work throughout the state not only helps imperiled species rebound – but alleviates mounting competition over water allocations in our Golden State.

California’s struggling fish, including Coho (see above) and Chinook salmon and steelhead, need healthy waterways with intact floodplains to flourish. Restoration activities build critical habitat, and could potentially reduce the amount of in-stream flows required to sustain certain species – bringing harmony into view for wildlife and landowners alike.

Thanks to you, Sustainable Conservation has achieved simplified permits for restoration in the entire coastal zone and with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for small-scale projects anywhere in the state. Energized by the progress you made possible, we are now getting close to completing simplified permitting coverage across all agencies and for projects of any size. By introducing simplified permits without size limitations, the patchwork of restoration projects needed to remediate our Golden State’s environmental challenges can be sewn together in larger swatches, more quickly.

(Page 1 of 5)

Safe Passage for Fish

With the 2016 completion of the first project approved under Sustainable Conservation’s Habitat Restoration and Enhancement Act, which simplifies the permitting process with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the progress you made possible was concrete. Literally! Our partners at South Coast Habitat Restoration, led by Mauricio “Moe” Gomez (seen above at far left and middle with Sustainable Conservation Senior Conservation Strategist Erik Schmidt), removed a concrete-lined section of Santa Barbara County’s Upper Carpinteria Creek, an undersized bridge that constricted streamflow, and several large concrete steps in the channel – all of which blocked endangered Southern California steelhead from reaching spawning and rearing sanctuaries upstream.

The project wrapped up a decade-long campaign by Moe and community colleagues to restore access to more than a mile of high-quality, rare habitat for fish in trouble. Completing this final link for local fish that need a boost is a major accomplishment and a great model for the incremental change we need to protect and improve California’s lands and waters.

(Page 2 of 5)

Coastal Zone Connectivity

The more quickly we can act to help imperiled wildlife and degraded ecosystems rebound, the better. You enact this work NOW – instead of years from now. Last spring, an agreement Sustainable Conservation developed with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Restoration Center and California Coastal Commission honored time being of the essence in helping Golden State waterways and biodiversity thrive. The program now covers California’s entire coastal zone – more than 1,000 miles.

The new approval was in place for the 2016 construction season to save restoration proponents considerable amounts of time and money – allowing more of those precious resources to be applied directly toward restoration work instead of to the permitting process. Large- and small-scale restoration projects in seven counties have already taken advantage of this program and been approved.

Above, you can see the lush progress of a Marin County project implemented in 2014 (photo at left) under the North Coast program – prior to 2016’s ruling that extends coverage up and down the coast. Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center took advantage of the earlier coastal zone permit approval Sustainable Conservation helped establish to restore their namesake creek and enhance streamside habitat (2016 photo at right).

(Page 3 of 5)

Central Valley Expansion

The three members of Sustainable Conservation’s Accelerating Restoration team – Associate Director of Restoration Erika Lovejoy, Senior Conservation Strategist Erik Schmidt, and Regulatory Research Analyst Katie Haldeman (see above) – are all avid cyclists, often negotiating tricky terrain on mountainous rides. Lucky for California conservation, this dynamic trio brings the same heart and grit from the trail to the agency boardroom. Their outreach unites statewide partnerships and programs that cast a lifeline to imperiled wildlife and improve water quality.

We’re so grateful you’re on this journey with Erika, Erik, and Katie – and all of us at Sustainable Conservation. In 2016, our quest to accelerate restoration across California brought us to the farm-rich Central Valley, a large piece of the puzzle we need to situate in order to attain truly statewide coverage with simplified permitting for environmentally beneficial projects. We’re cuing up agreements with NOAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to do just that.

Given California’s most recent drought and storm cycles, restoration in our nation’s agricultural heartland is needed now more than ever to address flood protection and water supply issues. Large-scale projects on the horizon could benefit greatly from permitting efficiency.

From bringing together coastal and inland parts of the state under a simplified permitting umbrella, to moving into policy and funding strategies to get more restoration done in California, we couldn’t keep striving without our donors. Thank you for partnering with us in 2016, and beyond, to better steward our Golden State’s natural resources.

(Page 4 of 5)

Floodplains

(Page 5 of 5)

Waste Not

Clean-Water Ally

Thanks to your generosity in 2016, Sustainable Conservation made great strides in addressing California’s most intractable water quality problems. As you know, our solutions are inspired by Central Valley farming communities who grow much of the nation’s food – and who, unfortunately, pay a steep environmental price for their important work to sustain millions of people across the country.

In particular, we focus on the California dairy industry, which is responsible for 20% of all milk produced in the U.S. Golden State powerhouse producers help generate about $25 billion worth of dairy products annually and about 30,000 on-farm jobs. This nourishing output comes with a host of management issues. According to experts, nitrates from dairies (mountains of cow manure mean heaps of excess nutrients) are one of the largest sources of groundwater contamination in the state.

You fuel our partnerships with dairy farmers to understand their day-to-day challenges and put business practices in place that benefit both the environment and local jobs. Click through to read about the progress your 2016 donations enacted.

(Page 1 of 5)

Demonstrating Benefit

In 2016, you helped broaden our pilot project, in partnership with De Jager Farms (see De Jager General Manager Nate Ray with Sustainable Conservation Project Manager John Cardoza, above left) and Netafim USA, to pipe dairy wastewater through a drip irrigation system – thereby addressing critical water quality and supply challenges facing California’s agricultural heart.

2016’s results from the De Jager Farms plots confirmed 2015 data showing increases in water and nitrogen use efficiency. With your donations and an influx of support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service, we set in motion three new demonstration sites over 217 acres to showcase the technology across a greater area of the San Joaquin Valley (see Sustainable Conservation Science Research Analyst Eric Lee at new site construction, above right).

Drip irrigation – as opposed to flood irrigation, the current dairy industry standard for feed-crop production – not only delivers water much more precisely to growing plants, but keeps nitrates from cow manure from seeping down into our subterranean aquifers. Feeding crops with dairy wastewater piped in through drip irrigation instead of synthetic fertilizers improves local water quality and soil health, and reduces farm fertilizer costs.

2016 was a crucial building year for working out the kinks of the system for maximum benefit to water conservation, efficient use of nutrients, and crop yield. We will be able to apply these lessons learned to the diversified farm sites in 2017, creating a robust case for adoption.

(Page 2 of 5)

Worms to the Rescue

Milk production comes with its fair share of challenges, including a continuous stream of cow manure that can compromise local groundwater and drinking water if not managed properly. Last winter, we wrapped up our “worm box” pilot project (led by Sustainable Conservation Senior Project Manager Joe Choperena, pictured at right above with owner Vic Fanelli) at Fanelli Dairy in Hilmar to meet these tricky conditions.

Your 2016 contributions supported water and air quality testing to evaluate a unique biological wastewater treatment system for widespread use on California dairies. We specifically sought to demonstrate the system in a region home to a high concentration of dairies with limited available cropland for applying excess manure, highly permeable soils, and shallow groundwater tables.

Employing technology created by our partner BioFiltro USA, Inc., the dairy’s wastewater is pumped through a series of filters to remove sand and other solids before being sprayed via sprinklers into the box – a concrete container housing worms and their microbial buddies, as well as layers of wood shavings and rocks. The worms consume organic matter in the wastewater as it percolates through the layers, ultimately removing 88% of total nitrogen from the liquid.

Thank you for helping us bring this convenient technology to light. By promoting clean water, the “worm box” offers hope for California dairy farmers to continue milking cows in the state they, their families and neighbors have called home for generations.

(Page 3 of 5)

Valuing Compost

Sustainable Conservation’s long-term investigation into the environmental and economic perks of dairy manure composting culminated in 2016 with a report that outlines a cost-effective opportunity for dairy operators to address their most pressing water and air quality challenges while preserving jobs in the San Joaquin Valley.

As our donors and partners, you help Sustainable Conservation identify and support agricultural practices that solve multiple environmental problems. We have found that dairy manure composting has the potential to minimize water contamination, improve soil, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Compost’s portability also provides an opportunity to lower nutrient concentrations in an area with more than 1.5 million resident cows.

As manure composting offers an economically viable way for dairies to reduce their most significant environmental impacts – groundwater quality degradation and methane emissions – we will work diligently to address the barriers to market growth for this practice as identified in the report.

Our report, which you helped bring to fruition, offers a roadmap for dairies to promote natural resources and healthy communities. With the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Healthy Soils Program to build soil carbon and reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in play – among other regulatory and policy boons – the timing for moving forward with our initiative is just right.

(Page 4 of 5)

Outreach Dream Team

(Page 5 of 5)

PlantRight

Community-Minded and Water-Wise

As a supporter of Sustainable Conservation’s PlantRight initiative, you have helped dramatically reduce the number of invasive plants for sale in California. This movement has educated hundreds of Golden State garden centers and their customers about the ecological and economic harm invasive plants can cause. Together, we’re also spreading the word about beautiful, non-invasive alternatives that are best-suited to your local climate.

During 2016’s parched planting season, garden stores and yards across the state called for drought-tolerant specimens that could thrive without guzzling water. In the search for plants that work harmoniously with California’s weather patterns, we encouraged folks to avoid choosing invasive plants that may boast low-water benefits but can damage our homes and open spaces in other ways. There are plenty of options (highlighted in the vibrant garden above) that look great, save water, AND play nicely with their botanical neighbors.

Buying non-invasive means many things, including protecting native flora and fauna, taking good care of our land and waterways, and saving millions in taxpayer dollars. Buying non-invasive plants casts a vote for the kind of world you want to live in – one that honors human and wildlife communities alike.

(Page 1 of 4)

California-Born Solution

Your contributions grow PlantRight’s strategy ever smarter and stronger to stop invasive plants in their tracks. Our steering committee (see group above) – an alliance of leaders from the horticulture industry, environmental organizations, science community, and government agencies – thanks you!

In particular, you have bolstered our collaborative program with “big-box” stores who represent the vast majority of ornamental plant sales. Through retail partnerships with The Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Orchard Supply Hardware stores in California, the percentage of Golden State big-box stores selling invasive plants dropped to an all-time low of 6% in 2016.

We like to say, “If you can measure it, you can manage it.” To do this, we rely on our annual spring nursery survey. In 2016, we worked with 175 volunteers to survey more than 300 independent, small-chain, and big-box retailers in 46 counties across the state. Collected data helps us track the retail market for invasive horticultural plants in California – and keep our finger on the pulse of stock and purchasing trends to influence in the name of environmental progress. Thanks to our outreach, the rate of stores selling locally invasive plants continues to decline.

(Page 2 of 4)

Leading the Nation

Thanks to you, PlantRight’s proven accomplishments in California have led to an opportunity to extend the prevention of invasive plant sales throughout the U.S. In 2016, we refined our user-friendly Plant Risk Evaluator (PRE) tool to make it easier for the horticulture industry to stop problem plants from being introduced in the first place. Supporting smart business decisions that protect natural spaces: it’s the Sustainable Conservation way!

The more plant screens our PRE database collects, the more robust the web-based tool becomes for our partners seeking to research, develop, and distribute non-invasive plants. By deploying the tool to a select number of horticultural colleges and botanic gardens, we exceeded our 2016 goal with 276 evaluations. In 2017, thanks in part to a generous grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we will add over 200 new evaluations by leading botanic gardens in Illinois, New Jersey, Minnesota, Texas, Georgia, and California.

Building upon PlantRight’s hard-won gains at the state level (monitored by our amazing cadre of volunteers during our annual nursery survey – see above), we’re promoting nationwide industry adoption of our PRE tool as a standard business practice. Our national focus born of strong California roots offers immense potential to protect wild landscapes by engaging nursery professionals as partners, rather than adversaries.

With your support, we’re driving a major market shift that accomplishes both environmental protection and business success.

(Page 3 of 4)

Resource Roots

Your contributions activate PlantRight’s unique strategy for protecting our Golden State’s rich variety of plants and animals – many of which are found nowhere else on Earth. From plant propagators and retailers, to home gardeners, and all proud Californians looking for ways to help care for the place we love, we have resources for you:

• PlantRight’s 2017 list of suggested alternative for invasive garden plants
• Where invasive plants are sold in California – and how we know (Medium)
• Plant Risk Evaluator website

As an added bonus, we hope you’ll also check out our low-water gardening guide. Despite the windfall of precipitation California received last winter, it’s still a great idea to plan a garden that uses as little water as possible to thrive in the state’s dry summers. A climate-appropriate yard or garden not only achieves water conservation – but also saves you time and money:

• Beyond Drought-Tolerant: A California Low-Water Gardening Guide from Sustainable Conservation

(Page 4 of 4)