Drought-Stricken California Faces Questions About Water Reserves

Late last year, California passed a new set of laws that would, for the first time, require the state to account for its groundwater resources and measure how much water is being used.

This new approach is being taken as California and other states continue to face drastic water shortages. According to ProPublica, the state’s natural resource agency runs a shadow program that allows many of its aquifers to be pumped full of toxic waste.

The program has the consent of the federal government and now California is taking steps to expand it, ProPublica reported.

Regulators are contemplating if they should legalize pollution that is already taking place at various other sites, “based on arguments that the water that will be lost was too dirty to drink or too difficult to access at an affordable price.”

Officials also may allow the borders of some pollution areas to be extended, according to ProPublica.

The proposed expansion would harm some parts of California that experience the most drought.

“Once [the state] exempts the water, it’s basically polluted forever. It’s a terrible idea,” Maya Golden-Krasner, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, told ProPublica. “We’re at a precipice point where the state is going to have to prioritize water over an industry that isn’t going to last.”

According to ProPublica, California relied on aquifers for at least 60 percent of its total water supply over the past three years.

The state is one of at least 23 states where aquifer exemptions have been issued. These exemptions are “exceptions to federal environmental law that allow mining or oil and gas companies to dump waste directly into drinking water reserves.”

A 2012 ProPublica investigation unveiled that the federal government had given permission to energy and mining companies to pollute U.S. aquifers in more than 1,000 locations, as part of an underground disposal program.

This program allows toxic substances to be disposed of in nearly 700,000 waste wells across the country.

According to ProPublica, the exact locations of the exemptions and the “precise boundaries of areas where aquifer pollution was allowed had been left poorly defined,” which raised concerns that waste might reach adjacent drinking water. Several states, including California, have admitted that they have permitted this to take place.

For more about California’s drought visit Water Online’s Water Scarcity Solutions Center.