Arvin, California – In the southern San Joaquin Valley, where roads wind through thousands of acres of orange groves, grape vines and carrot fields, a canal reaches a lynchpin that keeps the agricultural economy going: dozens of rectangular ponds filled with shimmering water.
While many parts of California’s Central Valley struggle to combat widespread overpumping and declining groundwater levels, the irrigation agency here is using ponds to effectively siphon river water, allowing it to seep into the soil and recharge groundwater.
“That sandy land, when you put water on it, it seeps into the groundwater and gets recharged,” said Jeevan Muhar, chief executive officer of the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District. “So it’s below us. We can see the water coming up.”
The irrigation district tracks groundwater levels. In dry times, when he needs the stored water, he uses dozens of wells to pump it out to the fields.
The Tejon Spreading Works is part of the network that the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District uses to recharge groundwater.
A new scientific study cites Arvin-Edison as one of dozens of areas where local efforts have halted water level declines and allowed aquifers to recover.
“Unfortunately, groundwater is rapidly depleting in many areas. However, groundwater depletion can be solved,” said Scott Jacechko, UC Santa Barbara professor of water resources, who co-authored the study. Study In science magazine.
Jaseshko examined 67 cases of groundwater recovery around the world, where water levels rose after a long period of decline. This happened in three main ways: policy change, exploitation of alternative water sources and recharging aquifers.
In most cases, obtaining river water was important. In California, groundwater has risen again in areas that received more water from canals or pipelines decades ago, including the Santa Clara Valley, Livermore-Amador Valley, South Yuba Basin, Yucca Valley, and parts of Los Angeles.
The South Canal of the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District flows through farmland in Kern County.
The Arvin-Edison Water Storage District near Bakersfield began building levees and digging basins for imported water in the 1960s. As the water seeped into the soil, it helped raise the groundwater level over the next decades.
Had these efforts not been in place over the years, the level would have fallen several hundred feet, Muhr said.
Still, he said the last 15 years have been particularly challenging. The agency has received less imported water during severe drought, and the average groundwater level has gone down again.
He said more work is needed to stabilize the aquifer in some areas of Arvin-Edison’s 132,000-acre site because it is declining.
A spillway controls the water level in the South Canal of the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District, which sends water to a pond in Kern County.
Muhar walked along a pond at the Tejon Spreading Works, where ducks were frolicking in the shallow water.
“You want to take advantage of wet years, capture that water before it’s lost to the ocean or other places and bring it to these types of areas,” he said.
In 2023, which was extremely wet, the agency captured that abundant water and buried it underground. In contrast, this year, Muhr said Arvin-Edison will pump more from underground deposits.
“This is managing California’s peak water,” he said.
When that saved water is pumped from the wells, it flows through canals and pipes to the fields of about 120 growers, irrigating onions, peaches, almonds, pistachios, potatoes, tomatoes and other crops.
Other agencies are recharging aquifers dozens of sites More facilities are being built throughout California to recharge groundwater.
Some projects in the San Joaquin Valley are successful and well-known, Muhr said, so water managers and researchers have visited from other parts of the world, including China and Ukraine, to see how agencies are doing it.
“This is the water banking capital of the world,” he said, “and we’ve been doing this for a long time.”
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Bridget Scanlon, a research professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences, who was not involved in the latest study, said Arvin-Edison is doing a good job managing river water as well as groundwater.
Maintaining the system even during periods of rain and drought requires a sophisticated approach, he said.
The study also examined various cases where policy changes helped groundwater levels rise.
In Tokyo, regulations placed limits on pumping. In Lima, Peru, well digging was banned in some areas. And in Bangkok, higher pumping fees helped water levels rise again.
In Saudi Arabia’s agricultural areas, groundwater levels have risen since the country began phasing out water-intensive alfalfa and other grass crops.
Rapidly growing urban areas in the western United States have found ways to raise groundwater levels by harnessing river water and channeling it underground.
Las Vegas pumps Colorado River water directly into the aquifer using special wells, and has been doing so since the late 1980s.
In Arizona, parts of the Phoenix and Tucson areas are boosted groundwater By carrying water from the Colorado River to valleys in the desert, where it flows underground.
However, the Colorado River has been overexploited increasingly unsafe Reductions are being made due to increasing global warming longer and more intense drought.
in 2025 StudyScanlon and other researchers wrote that Colorado River water cuts would “reduce significant replenishment of aquifers” in central Arizona in the coming years, and could lead to further depletion of groundwater.
In California, 2014 Sustainable Ground Water Management Act Set requirements for local agencies to curb overpumping and stabilize aquifer levels by 2040.
The Tejon Spreading Works was built in the 1960s to take water from a canal along the alluvial fan of Tejon Creek and store it in an underground aquifer.
Arvin-Edison farmers are in a better position than farmers in other areas who depend entirely on groundwater. Researchers have calculated that larger portions of California’s crop lands would need to be irrigated. left permanently dry In the coming years.
To reduce water use and comply with groundwater law, Arvin-Edison is beginning to buy some agricultural land and leave the fields fallow.
Muhar said the agency recently converted 350 acres into more ponds to replenish groundwater, and it plans to buy and retire more agricultural land.
