Connected By Water
Pursuing Collective Water Security Amid Climate Extremes.
Groundwater recharge occurs when water from rainfall, rivers, or other surface sources percolates through the soil and refills underground aquifers. This can occur naturally or be facilitated on farmland, floodplains, or in recharge basins.
Our Climate Reality
In 2024, California’s immediate water outlook is unusually positive. Our back-to-back wet winters filled reservoirs, recharged aquifers, and reversed drought conditions. Yet, according to recent UCLA research, we still are in the middle of the driest quarter-century in 1,200 years. These past two years are likely a brief respite amid a historic, climate change-fueled megadrought. When rain did fall in California this century, it inundated our state’s water conveyance system and flooded communities.
This current climate context demands sustainable and equitable solutions today to mitigate flood risk and conserve our state’s most precious water resources for tomorrow.
Your support enables us to uplift groundwater recharge as an on-the-ground solution with compounding benefits for our state’s ecosystems and communities during dry and wet years alike.
Furthering Our Understanding of California’s Water Web
Why is water so important to California and Sustainable Conservation’s work?
In California, water touches everything. It’s more than the water in our home. It’s the food we eat and the clothes we wear. It’s both our economic engine and our playground. And it’s not just ours – we share it with diverse ecosystems and species in California. It is such an important resource for our way of life. It’s also integral in how we think about every aspect of Sustainable Conservation’s work: from recharging our aquifers to building healthy soils, and from restoring habitat to improving water quality and nutrient management in our dairies and broader agricultural ecosystems.
What’s one way we’re helping to advance recharge in the face of climate change?
Sustainable Conservation knows that lasting environmental solutions must be rooted in the latest science and data. That’s why we teamed up with 26 water districts and the California Department of Water Resources to study five watersheds covering over a million acres in the San Joaquin Valley. These studies will help us better understand the watershed-specific opportunities to manage and recharge floodwater so that we can mitigate the challenges that climate change poses in both wet years and dry years.
Leveraging the interconnectivity of California water through multi-benefit recharge for our communities’ water security and health.
In our state’s complex and interdependent water system, every drop that falls or flows impacts ecosystems, communities, agriculture, and industries across the state. From the Sierra Nevada snowpack to our subterranean aquifer stores, stewarding our finite water resources necessitates acting within this intricate web.
Our state’s water interconnectivity manifests negatively and positively: while contaminants and unsustainable water consumption threaten water quality and quantity hundreds of miles away, solutions like recharge can offer flood relief and water supply resilience across watersheds. The results of groundwater recharge can benefit rural communities and coastal urban centers that rely on food grown with San Joaquin Valley groundwater. Diverting high water flows for recharge also protects communities from flood damage and can support in-stream flows during droughts.
Prioritizing multi-benefit projects is one way to do more with each drop of water. Where recharge is conducted matters and by targeting recharge we can both replenish aquifers and aid in subsidence reversal, groundwater-dependent ecosystem resilience, and community drinking water security.
For recharge to benefit communities, understanding historical and current drinking water equity is key. Sustainable Conservation is investing in multi-benefit recharge projects that can help bolster the water supplies for disadvantaged communities who rely on impacted drinking water wells.
In collaboration with Fairmead Community and Friends, Self-Help Enterprises, the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and others, Sustainable Conservation will demonstrate how recharge and land repurposing can support Fairmead, where domestic wells are running dry. Working directly with residents, our team is developing a suite of projects that help secure water resources in and around the community for climate resilience. The proposed groundwater basin and surrounding land will also create green space for the community.
Ensuring every drop counts
When we launched our Watershed Moment campaign three years ago, it was a pivotal opportunity to weave together Sustainable Conservation’s programs within a unified vision of water resilience. Just as water connects our diverse communities and ecosystems across California, it joins our collective efforts to enhance water and climate resilience at the landscape level.
Together, we’re recharging more water than ever with more growers, willing partners, and enabling policies. These achievements reflect our state’s growing ability to adapt to the current and future realities of climate change.
The diverse investment in our Watershed Moment campaign from the philanthropic, agriculture, government, and private sectors is a testament to the shared belief in collaboratively scaling recharge statewide.
Our next steps include expanding successful recharge strategies, further supporting enabling policies, and strengthening our key partnerships. 2023 was a banner year, but we can do more. By working with – not against – each other, we can enhance water reliability, reduce flood risk, and ensure our communities and ecosystems thrive.
As always, Sustainable Conservation remains committed to fostering collaboration and implementing practical solutions that benefit all Californians
Let’s keep up the momentum and work together to ensure every drop counts.
Best,
Ashley Boren
