Recharging Groundwater With Flood waters In Almonds

There are many ways to recharge groundwater. One of them is to take floodwaters and spread it over dormant almond orchards

Jesse Roseman is a Regulatory and Environmental Affairs Principal Analyst at the Almond Board of California. He explains this idea, the almond

“The Almond Board has been doing research into this, and of course the Board was very proactive and started early on this. I think one of the reasons was because we've got a lot of acreage in the valley and the recharge basins that are out there right now just don't have the capacity to take what would be required to get these basins into sustainability,” said Roseman.

“We wanted to look at the time of year when trees are dormant. I guess we were hoping that applying excess water in the winter time wouldn't damage yields or wouldn't harm tree health. And the research that we've done so far does look positive,” noted Roseman.

“The other benefit is that many almond orchards are along existing conveyance channels. And I know that's something that Sustainable Conservation is trying to overlay where we have existing conveyance and where we have crops that have the right conditions at the right time of year, when water is available to take that excess water and hopefully do it at a very economically beneficial price point,” noted Roseman

And this year there has been heavy snow, which could make this year an ideal one to move floodwaters.