We often don’t know what we’re doing…

Farther Afield
Tom Willey
T & D Willey Farms

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Last week, nearly six months to the day we commenced well drilling, a PG&E crew installed a transformer, set the new meter and finally connected our 75 hp pump motor to their electric grid. We’d been making do with a monstrous rented generator, ($3000/month), sucking diesel like a drunken sailor for a number of weeks. This exhausting project nears completion as we fine tune a unique Variable Speed Drive (VSD), an innovation which allows us to withdraw from one to a thousand GPM from our well automatically, only consuming electricity proportional to the gallonage. Our farm survived this half-year ordeal thanks to the generosity of neighbors who lent water, persistent skilled drillers and most recently the technical savvy of Hollis Priest Jr., my master pump man and electrician. Immediate threats to our water supply are now at bay but serious, long-term issues still darken the horizon.

A fine illustration of your tax dollars wisely spent is a just released U. S. Geological Survey report (Professional Paper 1766), assessing past, present and future of our Central Valley’s stored groundwater which yields an astonishing 20% of this nation’s total annual subsurface supplies. The Sacramento Valley, irrigating fewer acres and endowed with more generous surface supplies, maintains generally stable groundwater levels. Not so our larger San Joaquin Valley, more arid and more intensively farmed, which has suffered a net loss amounting to sixty million acre feet of stored underground water over the last four decades, a quantity sufficient to supply every California household for ten years. USGS lead author, Claudia Faunt’s comprehensive, five year, $1 million, ground breaking study ominously predicts a bleak water future, should we in the San Joaquin Valley persist in “business as usual” consumptive habits. However the researchers offer a more optimistic alternative scenario, pointing out that our eastside, coarse-grained alluvial-fan soils are perfect for largescale artificial groundwater recharge projects. With rumors of a wet El Nino afoot for the approaching winter, plans should be made now for an extraordinary effort to store surplus water underground. We recently demonstrated our farm could play its small part in such an effort on short notice, as could many others with appropriate coordination. Wendell Berry asserts “we often don’t know what we’re doing for failure to understand what we’re undoing.” USGS scientists have made a significant contribution by illustrating the dynamic nature of our precious underground hydrological resource. Let us put this knowledge to good use in modifying our practice. –Tom Willey

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