Chapter 5: Planning Conjunctive Use Management

To implement conjunctive use management of Yolo County's water system and the types of broad integrated strategies described in Chapter 4 will require major changes in the way water planning and operations are conducted in the County. Planning conjunctive use management will require having:

1. a balanced perspective encompassing the water needs of all the participants in the County's water system;
   
2. more quantitative information and analysis on the physical behavior of the interrelated groundwater basin, its recharge mechanisms, the severity and consequences of overdraft in different parts of the County;
   
3. capability to assess impacts of proposed activities;
   
4. the ability to negotiate and enforce water planning and policy decisions at the County level involving the organization, operation, and integration of artificial groundwater recharge and recovery schemes, water exchanges within the County, and water transfers/exchanges with agencies outside the County; and
   
5. the technical, financial, and legal resources to support these expectations.

At present no body, agency or institution in the County has the capacity to fulfill the requirements of planning conjunctive use management listed above. The County is particularly ill-equipped to oversee groundwater resources, which remain unmanaged and largely unmonitored. Improvements in institutional arrangements, the sophistication and orientation of technical capacity, data collection and analysis, and processes for public participation may all be needed to support a new emphasis on groundwater resources and the predominance groundwater would take in the conjunctive use management of the County's water system.

Some constraints facing the County, should it wish to begin conjunctively managing its water system, are presented in more detail in the first section below. Several implications of these constraints for planning conjunctive use management of the County's water system are discussed in the subsequent section.

A. CONSTRAINTS ON IMPLEMENTING CONJUNCTIVE USE MANAGEMENT
Yolo County-wide conjunctive use management will require finding ways to overcome the following constraints and difficulties.

A.1. Institutional weakness
No institutional framework exists in Yolo County with the financial and technical resources and/or legal and moral authority to examine integrated approaches to the conjunctive management of the available surface and groundwater resources. Instead, decisions concerning water use and resource management are made by a variety of local water districts, cities and agencies, which for the most part are each narrowly focused and knowledgeable only on water issues within their local boundaries. Also, each organization tends to be singularly concerned with one or the other type of water supply, and not their conjunctively managed use. Water planning at these local agencies reflects their limited view of the problem and range of solutions they consider

A.2. Groundwater information gaps
Lack of understanding of the groundwater system, especially its recharge mechanisms, and lack of sufficient physical data on groundwater use and problems in Yolo County hampers any kind of comprehensive groundwater resource management. Groundwater management is a fundamental and priority activity of conjunctive use management, especially in Yolo County's situation. It will require developing a groundwater modeling program.

A.3. Multi-objective, multi-purpose decision-making
Given the multiple objectives (economic, social, environmental, etc.) and multiple purposes (agriculture, M&I, habitat, etc.) inherent in conjunctive use management, conflicts, tradeoffs and relationships among competing water interests and objectives in Yolo County need to be understood and evaluated. To balance these objectives fairly, more public participation will be needed, and more complex, sophisticated optimization approaches may be useful. This analytical capacity and an appropriate perspective will have to be found and developed

A.4. Complexities of cost-sharing and financing
In conjunctive use management schemes, partitioning costs and benefits can become quite complex especially because of the difficulties in estimating the benefits for users of the groundwater aquifer which tend to be dissipated and long-term in nature. Creative cost-sharing and financing arrangements, based on quantification of estimated benefits, will be needed. Developing these arrangements, in turn, will depend on good technical data and analysis of surface and ground water interactions, sound evaluation of the performance of proposed conjunctive schemes, and public evaluations of the value of tradeoffs among interests and objectives. These arrangements must also be flexible enough to be modified as conditions change and in response to updated information gleaned from on-going monitoring.

A.5. Getting farmers' participation and support
In normal years, private farmers pump 91 percent of all groundwater used in the County. In drought years, their share of groundwater pumping is even higher. No monitoring or regulation of private groundwater pumping exists in the County nor is there any authority to do so. Consequently, if groundwater management and conjunctive use activities are to be carried out, farmers' participation and support will be essential in the planning process. While some of the many water interests of farmers in Yolo County are officially represented through the existing irrigation and reclamation districts, groundwater use activities are not. Thus adequate mechanisms to include farmers in any conjunctive use planning and implementation process and to assure their participation and interests as major groundwater users in Yolo County must be identified and put in place.

A.6. Groundwater rights and legal constraints on management
Legal constraints to implementing conjunctive use management of the groundwater basin may be the most difficult to overcome. Under California's groundwater rights laws, efforts to manage groundwater may be severely limited by the legal inability to regulate private groundwater pumping. In effect, private land owners have unrestricted rights to pump as much groundwater from under their property as they wish, whenever they wish. A public consensus to support the goals and costs of conjunctive use management will be needed to overcome this constraint, particularly from private pumpers. Again, public participation in the planning process will be crucial to develop consensus.

Alternately legal constraints could be circumvented by appropriately adjusting economic prices and incentives to farmers in such a way that they self-regulate their groundwater and surface water use to match conjunctive use management objectives. As an example of this approach, Professor Richard Howitt, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis, has suggested that farmers should pay lower electricity rates for groundwater pumping in drought years and higher rates in wet years (Boyd, 1991). The comparative costs of using surface and groundwater in wet and dry years would be adjusted to encourage farmers to use more surface water when there are excess supplies in wet years and then to compensate them in dry years when only groundwater is available. Such a simple, yet elegant approach might encourage farmers to support conjunctive management activities, and should gain their acceptance by lowering their water costs over the long run through cost averaging of wet and dry years and lower pumping lifts.

B. IMPLICATIONS FOR PLANNING
Several suggestions and implications emerge from these constraints on planning conjunctive use management in Yolo County. The first concerns what kind of new institutional form(s) and organizational relationship(s) can best carry out the conjunctive operations and activities described in this report and meet the constraints and difficulties mentioned above. The second responds to the very basic need for groundwater data, analysis and modeling in the County. The last implication deals with some aspects of the timing and steps for starting a planning process.

B.1. Institutional considerations
In selecting the organizational form or institution most appropriate for planning conjunctive use management in Yolo County, consideration should be given to the special features of the County's water system. For instance, the type of institution selected must be able to undertake effective and strong County-wide groundwater management. Because of the heavy use of groundwater in Yolo County by private farmers, and the legal ambiguities around groundwater rights, institutional forms created mostly for surface water activities are not likely to be adequate. The choice of a County-wide water body will also have implications for how the balance between agricultural and urban water interests in the County are represented. As seen in Chapter 4, conjunctive use activities can involve acquiring entitlements for the use of water (surface and groundwater), moving water around the County, storing it, and selling and buying it. There is some empirical evidence to suggest that it might be difficult for an entity, with neither conveyance facilities nor entitlements or control over some water supplies within the system being managed, to organize and implement the kinds of exchanges, transportation, and recharge storage of water, etc. that conjunctive schemes will entail.

Other conjunctively managed water systems in California and the Western United States exist and should be examined to see if their institutional forms can be used in Yolo County. Kern County, also a major agricultural center, has an extensive and sophisticated County-wide conjunctive use management program operated on a large scale by the Kern County Water Agency (Kletzing, 1988). Groundwater management districts offer another institutional arrangement that could be used for conjunctive use activities. Santa Clara County has a long history with groundwater activities and artificial recharge and many areas in Southern California are involved in conjunctive management of their groundwater supplies. In neighboring Solano County, the Solano County Water Authority serves as a County-wide water management body. It may offer important lessons and experiences for Yolo County in its search for an appropriate institution. In studying other institutional experiences for their application to Yolo County, attention should be focused on how and to what extent groundwater management and conjunctive management have been successfully implemented.

One idea which may have merit for addressing some of the institutional considerations stated above is to modify the YCFCWCD into a County-wide body for conjunctive management activities. The district offers a number of institutional advantages for conjunctive use management. First the YCFCWCD is the largest irrigation district in Yolo County, is also the biggest water purveyor and already covers about 40 percent of the groundwater basin (although they currently have no authority over groundwater). With entitlements to an important surface water supply and groundwater recharge source in the County, the Cache Creek system, and owning Cache Creek surface storage, the district is well poised physically to implement artificial recharge programs along Cache Creek and conjunctively manage groundwater with Cache Creek water resources. They also have an extensive canal distribution system which will be needed for conjunctive use schemes, and could be extended as required. Their experience building and operating conveyance facilities and moving water around the County through their system could be put to use for new conveyances to handle conjunctive activities. Modifications to the YCFCWCD to convert it into a County-wide conjunctive management body might entail changing its enabling laws, expanding its boundaries, giving it groundwater management authority, and supplementing its technical staff capabilities to include groundwater and conjunctive use expertise.

B.2. Developing technical analysis of groundwater resources
Little planning of County-wide conjunctive management can be done without much more technical information about groundwater resources. Many water-related issues in the County, including conjunctive use alternatives suggested in this report, will require good information about the interrelated behavior of the groundwater basin throughout the County. Establishing an on-going permanent groundwater modeling program to provide the needed information for future water planning activities is essential. Many other planning, operational, and monitoring activities will continually depend on such a program. A lot of good groundwater data, and valuable studies of various aspects of the County's groundwater resources exist, but are scattered in private hands or at local agencies throughout the County. Some permanent technical capacity in the County must be organized and developed to centrally process this basic groundwater information, conduct analyses and groundwater modeling on a permanent basis, and make all this information available to the public. Whether this specialized groundwater technical capacity should housed by County government or be part of some other County-wide water entity is another issue to consider.

B.3. Timing of steps in the planning process
Planning and implementing conjunctive use schemes will require time to overcome constraints, resolve the institutional problem, and develop public consensus. However, some important and basic tasks can be started immediately to prepare the way and to begin the process.

The first should be to set up a central County-wide program for the collection and development of critically important information on the behavior of the groundwater aquifer. The program should include a plan for the on-going development and refinement of a comprehensive groundwater modeling program. In the short-term this program can be used to answer questions about groundwater quality deterioration, subsidence and the physical impacts of various kinds of water transfers outside the County, such as those that occurred through the 1991 and 1992 State Emergency Drought Water Banks. Eventually, this program can be used to evaluate and monitor groundwater activities and the impacts of any conjunctive use management scheme.

As a parallel activity, a task force could be formed, representing relevant parties and interests in the County, to research and evaluate possible institutional arrangements for conducting County-wide conjunctive use and groundwater management. This work should also include developing a process to gain public input, support for, and approval of the final selection, especially from agricultural groundwater users.

C. SUMMARY
The most important constraints to implementing conjunctive use management are the lack of any appropriate institution in the County, and insufficient information on the County's groundwater resources. Planning conjunctive use management will take time to bring about the many changes needed in the way water supplies are managed and programs developed in the County. As a start, two tasks can be initiated immediately. Both are essential steps along the way to eventual implementation of conjunctive use activities. One is to set-up a task-force to study and evaluate alternative organizational or institutional forms that could provide the appropriate County-wide structure to implement conjunctive management of its water system. The other immediate task is to launch a comprehensive technical program to develop a permanent groundwater data collection, analysis and modeling capacity within the County.