For the first time, thanks to mandates from the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), a local effort to collect reliable data on small, private wells in the Salinas Valley groundwater basin is underway.
The effort, run by the Monterey County Water Resources Agency (MCWRA) in partnership with the Salinas Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency (SVBGSA), aims to fill a major data gap under SGMA by building an inventory of these wells to assess their vulnerability and create drought contingency plans.
“We are not asking rural residents to report the extractions,” says Piret Harmon, general manager of SVBGSA. “Because the hydrogeology is quite complex, it makes a big difference where exactly and how deep they are, how old they are, because that’s the only way we can truly understand where we need to focus our efforts in assuring everyone has sustainable groundwater.”