Get recharge ready
A package of tools to help groundwater sustainability agencies, growers, and nonprofits plan and carry out groundwater recharge in their area.
Guides
Start here for practical, field-tested guidance on on-farm recharge.
Recharge Methods Manual
Observed results and lessons learned from over a decade of Sustainable Conservation working directly with growers and irrigation districts to implement on-farm recharge. Practical information from growers to growers, including over 20 case studies spanning grapes, almonds, pistachio, fallow, basins, and more.
Recharge Incentives and Strategies
California water districts and GSAs are increasingly using financial incentives and water management strategies to accelerate groundwater recharge on farmland and reduce pumping in overdrafted basins. Drawing on practitioners’ real-world experience, this report shares examples of these incentives, along with opportunities to leverage and pitfalls to avoid, so other districts and GSAs can tailor strategies to their own subbasins.
Protecting crop health during on-farm recharge
These guidance sheets help growers conduct on-farm recharge while protecting their crop’s health. Choose your crop.
Region-specific recommendations
Yolo District Recharge Guidance
Sustainable Conservation worked with the Yolo County Flood Control & Water Conservation District to expand its decades-old canal recharge program onto agricultural lands. This memo describes the District’s grower incentives, including reimbursement for field setup costs and free or discounted winter water. It also covers a simplified prioritization map that helps identify fields where recharge is most feasible and beneficial.
Kaweah RapidGRAT
This technical memo estimates the maximum recharge possible through canal seepage, recharge basins, and on-farm recharge across the Consolidated Water District’s roughly 80,000 acres in the Greater Kaweah GSA. It introduces RapidGRAT, a faster, simplified version of the Groundwater Recharge Assessment Tool (GRAT) that shows districts what they could achieve in a wet year like 2023. The method is designed as a template for other basins across California.
Turlock: Groundwater Recharge Program Guidance and Recommendations
The East and West Turlock Subbasin GSAs jointly manage a basin where surface water is plentiful on the west side but groundwater decline is concentrated on the east. This memo describes how the two GSAs divided responsibility through strategies like in-lieu recharge, demand reduction, and a replenishment water agreement. It also offers guidance for building recharge programs on agricultural lands across the subbasin.