The Napa County is in the process of preparing a Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) for the Napa Valley Subbasin, as required by the State for all high- and medium- priority groundwater basins. The Napa Sierra Club recently submitted a list of recommendations designed to strengthen the GSP and increase planning and protection for our water resources. (Photo credit: Raphael Kluzniok)
We had hoped to discuss these recommendations at a meeting of the Groundwater Sustainability Plan Advisory Committee (GSPAC), but were informed at a meeting with the County staff that the compressed schedule for preparing the Plan would make it difficult to allow time for discussion of public input. GSPAC Chair David Graves agreed that the Sierra Club had raised some very important issues, some of which go beyond the scope of the GSP. He said “I look for this GSP to be a piece of a comprehensive look at many of the issues that have been raised by the Sierra Club and other members of the community.”
Because the GSP is focusing only on actions within the subbasin boundary (the floor of the Napa Valley), it currently does not provide help or hope for residents who live outside the subbasin like Penny Pawl who reported in a recent letter to the Napa Register that two nearby homeowners have had to drill new wells this year for lack of water, a very expensive process. It will not improve conditions for residents like Patricia Damery, living in the watershed outside the subbasin boundaries, whose well and irrigation ponds were both dry this year, forcing her family to rely on trucked water. Damery states that “rural wells have become underperforming or dry due to increased development, the drilling of more wells, and climate changes and drought.”
However the GSP does include these residents in its goal: To protect and enhance groundwater quantity and quality for all the people who live and work in Napa County, regardless of the source of their water supply (emphasis added). The County and everyone living and working in the county will integrate stewardship principles and measures in groundwater development, use, and management to protect economic, environmental, and social benefits and maintain groundwater sustainability indefinitely without causing undesirable results, including unacceptable economic, environmental, or social consequences.1
What steps could the GSP or a regional Groundwater Plan include that would help protect the groundwater for residents of the watershed and protect the groundwater inflow from the watershed to the subbasin? The Sierra Club’s letter of recommendations makes the following suggestions:
- Map all wells in the county. Meter water use and monitor water level for all commercial/agricultural users to generate data on water levels in the watershed (as well as the subbasin)
- Monitor representative wells in the watershed for impacts on groundwater quality due to wildfire
- Place a moratorium on commercial development that relies on groundwater use until a plan is adopted that provides a complete reporting of groundwater extraction
- Place a moratorium on clearing oak woodlands as these serve to replenish groundwater in the watershed
What steps can well-owners take right now?
- Report water shortages to DWR at https://mydrywatersupply.water.ca.gov/report/ . This information will be used to make the Napa Valley Subbasin GSP more robust.
Finally, the Napa County Board of Supervisors through its authority over groundwater and well permits could enact these protections as a part of the Integrated Regional Water Management Plan . The longer we wait to manage ALL our groundwater resources, the less we’ll have to manage. The Napa Sierra Club urges the Board of Supervisors to prioritize planning for watershed groundwater supplies as well as those in the GSP area.