Jim E. Smallwood: Time to make farmers account for how much they pump
The water under the land should belong to whoever owns the land, this is a presumption that we have operated on for as long as there has been a California. So the large land owners can drain the aquifer under their land as often as they want to. But they don’t just take the water under their land. When they pump the water table down by a foot, they also take the water from under all the land above that aquifer – and most aquifers are connected.
So they are, in a sense, taking the water under other people’s land. In this time of drought we are mandated to save water, but the large land owners, with their large pumps, are still sucking up the water from all the aquifers – and they don’t even have to let the state know how much of our water they are taking. So, isn’t it time the state legislators got busy and made everyone put meters on the pumps sucking up our water? Then at least we would know how much water is being taken and who is getting the bulk of the water.
Jim E. Smallwood, Modesto
This story was originally published May 4, 2015 at 2:03 PM with the headline "Jim E. Smallwood: Time to make farmers account for how much they pump."