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Technical Appendix A: the San Joaquin Valley’S Water Balance 3 Brad Arnold and Alvar Escriva-Bou

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Technical Appendix A: the San Joaquin Valley’S Water Balance 3 Brad Arnold and Alvar Escriva-Bou Water Stress and a Changing San Joaquin Valley Technical Appendices CONTENTS Technical Appendix A: The San Joaquin Valley’s Water Balance 3 Brad Arnold and Alvar Escriva-Bou Technical Appendix B: The San Joaquin Valley’s Economic Trends, Agricultural and Rural Community Characteristics, and Institutions 26 Jelena Jezdimirovic, Ellen Hanak, Brian Gray, Sarge Green, Josué Medellín-Azuara Technical Appendix C: Native Species in the San Joaquin Valley: Drivers of Water and Land-use Regulation 41 Nathaniel Seavy and Peter Moyle Supported with funding from the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the TomKat Foundation, and the US Environmental Protection Agency This publication was developed with partial support from Assistance Agreement No.83586701 awarded by the US Environmental Protection Agency to the Public Policy Institute of California. It has not been formally reviewed by EPA. The views expressed in this document are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the agency. EPA does not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned in this publication. Water Stress and a Changing San Joaquin Valley Technical Appendix A: The San Joaquin Valley’s Water Balance CONTENTS Figure A1 5 FIgure A2 7 FIgure A3 7 FIgure A4 8 FIgure A5 9 FIgure A6 10 FIgure A7 11 FIgure A8 12 FIgure A9 12 FIgure A10 13 FIgure A11 13 FIgure A12 15 FIgure A13 16 FIgure A14 16 FIgure A15 18 Figure A16 19 Table A1 20 FIgure A17 21 FIgure A18 22 FIgure A19 22 FIgure A20 23 FIgure A21 24 Brad Arnold and Alvar Escriva-Bou Supported with funding from the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the TomKat Foundation, and the US Environmental Protection Agency PPIC.ORG/WATER Technical Appendices Water Stress and a Changing San Joaquin Valley 3 Assessing the Water Balance of the San Joaquin Valley Objective This appendix provides information on data sources and methods used to assess the annual water balances in the San Joaquin Valley for 1986–2015.1 A water balance is an accounting statement that estimates water inflows (including precipitation and other water flowing into the area), outflows (including net or consumptive water used locally and water flowing out of the area),2 and changes in water stored in surface reservoirs and aquifers. As with any mass balance, the sum of inflows, outflows, and changes in storage has to be zero every year. By presenting inputs and outputs in an understandable way—and accounting for their variability—a water balance depicts the water uses and availability in a region. Water balances also illustrate how change in a water system—such as new policies, new infrastructure, or climate change—affects water availability and the system’s ability to meet water demands. The water balance presented here is a high-level overview of major water sources and uses. For the San Joaquin Valley, a particular interest is understanding the extent of long-term groundwater overdraft, or long-term depletions of water stored in aquifers. This practice will need to end as water users implement the state’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Ending overdraft can be achieved by augmenting other usable inflows and reducing net water use. Estimating regional water balances is challenging in California. Official estimates of flows and uses often are not available over a time period that is both sufficiently long and up-to-date for long-term planning purposes.3 In addition, many of the flows needed are not available in a comprehensive and consistent manner. In particular, groundwater withdrawals and use are not tracked in a comprehensive way within the valley, and there are no systematic, long-term estimates of net water use. For these reasons, water balance estimation requires numerous intermediate calculations and assumptions. In the following sections, we first define the region’s boundaries. We then present estimates of inflows, outflows, and changes in water stored. We then summarize the overall water balance for the valley and compare our results with other estimates for overlapping years. Despite the inherent uncertainties, we believe our estimates provide a good “big picture” representation of the valley’s water balance for the past three decades. Definition of the Region’s Boundaries The San Joaquin Valley includes two hydrologic regions: the San Joaquin River Basin and the Tulare Lake Basin. The valley is bounded by the Sierra Nevada mountains to the east, the Tehachapi mountains to the south, and the Coastal Range to the west. North of the San Joaquin Valley is the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, the 1 In this technical appendix we always refer to water years: the 12-month period between October 1st and September 30th of the following year. The water year is designated by the calendar year in which it ends and which includes 9 of the 12 months. 2 Gross water use is the total amount of water applied to fields for irrigation or used indoors. Net (or consumptive) water use is the portion consumed by people or plants, embodied in manufactured goods, evaporated into the air, or discharged into saline water bodies or groundwater basins, where the water is not reusable without significant (and costly) treatment. Net water use excludes “return flows”—the portion of gross water use that returns to rivers, streams, or aquifers after use and is available for reuse. Return flows mainly come from irrigation water not consumed by crops and urban wastewater discharges. Because they are available for reuse, return flows are not considered a use in the water balance. 3 As described below, the Department of Water Resources’ (DWR) California Water Plan Update (Bulletin 160-13) provides estimates for 1998–2010; these estimates are problematic for key measures including groundwater overdraft. DWR’s C2VSim model has long-term estimates of water balances of surface water and groundwater for the region, but they only go through 2009. In both cases, these estimates stop before the onset of the severe drought in 2012, which has seen record levels of groundwater pumping. PPIC.ORG/WATER Technical Appendices Water Stress and a Changing San Joaquin Valley 4 terminus of the San Joaquin River for water entering San Francisco Bay. The southern valley floor consists of low alluvial plains and fans, overflow lands, and old terminal lake beds. We calculate the water balance for the two regions combined—the commonly accepted definition of the greater San Joaquin Valley. Together, these two regions have a clear physical limit as an external boundary—the Sierra Nevada in the east, the Tehachapi Mountains in the south, the Coastal Range in the west, and the Delta in the North—with considerable internal hydrological connectivity. Flows from the San Joaquin River are conveyed to the Tulare Lake region through the Central Valley Project’s (CVP) Friant–Kern canal; flows from the Kings River in the Tulare basin run to the San Joaquin River during flood periods; both hydrologic regions receive water imported from Northern California through the Delta; and there is also significant joint water management and water trading across the combined region, using local, state, and federal infrastructure. To assess the water balance, we focus on the valley floor. Most water available in the San Joaquin Valley is either native to the Central and Southern Sierra Nevada or imported from the Sacramento hydrologic region through the Delta. The Valley floor is where most net or consumptive uses occur—especially from irrigated agriculture, but also from evapotranspiration from urban and environmental uses, and natural landscapes. The objective is to assess the annual net balance of inflows, outflows, and changes in water stored in surface reservoirs and aquifers. We define the Valley floor as the intersection of the Department of Water Resources (DWR) Planning Areas 602, 603, 606, 607, 608, 609, 702, 703, 704, 705, 706, 708, 709 and 7010 (Figure A1). FIGURE A1 San Joaquin River and Tulare Lake watersheds PPIC.ORG/WATER Technical Appendices Water Stress and a Changing San Joaquin Valley 5 Inflows Four types of water inflows are considered here: flows into the valley from local watersheds (including the Central and Southern Sierra Nevada and the Western Costal range), direct diversions from the Delta, water from net precipitation on the valley floor, and water imported from other regions—especially through the Sacramento– San Joaquin Delta, but also much smaller imports through the Folsom South Canal. These inflows can be either used the same year or stored in surface reservoirs or aquifers for later use. Conversely, some of the water used can be obtained from withdrawals from surface and groundwater storage. Inflows from local watersheds To assess inflows into the valley floor from local watersheds we obtained estimates of “full natural” or “unimpaired” flows for the main rivers and creeks in the region.4 We obtained full natural flows (monthly volume) for the period of study from California Data Exchange Center (CDEC) for the following local watersheds (initials in parentheses are used to designate CDEC stations): . San Joaquin River hydrologic region o San Joaquin River – Friant Dam (SJF) o Merced River – Near Merced Falls (MRC) o Tuolumne River – La Grange Dam (TLG) o Stanislaus River – Goodwin (SNS) o Mokelumne River – Mokelumne Hill (MKM) o Cosumnes River – Michigan Bar (CSN) . Tulare Lake Basin hydrologic region o Kings River – Pine Flat Dam (KGF). o Kaweah River – Terminus Dam (KWT) o Tule River – Success Dam (SCC) o Kern River – Bakersfield (KRB) For some minor local watersheds in the San Joaquin River hydrologic region, where CDEC data were insufficient or inconsistent, we used 1986–2003 data from DWR (2007). We estimated the data after 2003 calibrating a simplified rainfall-runoff model that mimics the runoff response to rainfall in the gaged catchments.
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