By James Gregory
Hello to all my readers out there, and might I say welcome to my blog post! Allow me to introduce myself, my name is James Gregory, and I am a GrizzlyCorps service member serving at the Sonoma Resource Conservation District (SRCD) in the groundwater resources team with the lovely and talented Project Manager Fatima Burhan under the guidance of the equally lovely and talented Executive Director Christine Kuehn.
During this year at the SRCD I have been learning about conservation as a career, learning about groundwater, and excuse me if I begin to turn poetic here, about the unknown forces that can shape our life in big ways. I say this because groundwater is a perfect physical example of and metaphor for these forces. We rely on it, and yet very many of us have very little understanding of how it works. These unknowns at the fringes of our understanding often frighten us, making us want to turn away from them, and yet, I have learned that turning towards them can yield the most rewarding results.
The first unknown that I have begun to engage with in this service year, groundwater, has historically been treated as a bit of a scientific mystery by many legislators and resource managers. The Texas Supreme Court famously said in a 1904 case, referencing an earlier 1861 decision, that, “the existence, origin, movement, and course of such waters, and the causes which govern and direct their movements, are so secret, occult, and concealed that an attempt to administer any set of legal rules in respect to them would be involved in hopeless uncertainty, and would, therefore, be practically impossible,” (Mace et al., n.d.).
This attitude of willful ignorance has contributed to the delayed legislation around groundwater, with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) being passed here in California in 2014. While this has influenced almost all our work here in the groundwater team, I find the most interesting project that we are working on now to be an example of not simply trying to withdraw from the groundwater but giving back to it, in the form of an On-Farm Recharge Pilot Study in the Alexander Valley.
The pilot will be taking place in our partner vineyards along the banks of the Russian River. The idea of on-farm recharge is essentially to take water from the Russian River in times of high flows (winter and early spring) and applying it to adjacent agricultural fields in large quantities to super-saturate the underlying aquifer, and store greater quantities of water, which will last longer into the year than un-recharged aquifers.
On-Farm Recharge simulates the natural flood processes that would have been present prior to the channelization of the river. These increased aquifers will be able to maintain large quantities of water into the driest times of year, meaning consistent outflow into the Russian River, enhancing the stream’s surface flow. The Russian River is a very important corridor for federally endangered Coho Salmon and federally threatened Chinook Salmon and Steelhead Trout. The benefit for farmers is that higher groundwater levels mean reduced irrigation use longer into the year, for longer into the year.
This could be huge for the area in terms of building climate resilience on farms, allowing for the continuation of salmon run while at the same time giving protection against unpredictable, and increasingly very hot and dry conditions.
This is the first study of its kind done in Sonoma County and one of the largest construction projects for groundwater sustainability the Sonoma RCD has ever taken on, so its existence alone is very significant. Learning much more about groundwater from well drillers, Fatima, and first-hand experience has been very rewarding, and this pilot study sticks out to me as being a hopeful example of humans being able to give back to nature, while at the same time receiving from it.
However, groundwater is not the only unknown that I faced this year, the other is something that I have often found myself frightened of: people. This experience came from our voluntary well-monitoring program, which is a big part of our work here in the groundwater team. The program consists of RCD staff driving all around the county checking the well depths of participant landowners and recording them. After collecting, we return their data to them showing seasonal and historic trends at their property, which can reach back as far as 2012 at this point. We then anonymously submit this data to either our local Groundwater Sustainability Agencies’ (GSAs) database, or the California Statewide Groundwater Elevation Monitoring Database which tracks groundwater data at a state level.
Now, this project has not only helped me gain a greater understanding of the condition of groundwater across our beautiful county but also has been a huge opportunity for me to engage with people in a professional capacity.
Professional communication is something that, for me, does not come naturally and has not been taught in my prior experience. I am still learning every day how to practice it more successfully. In person interaction surprised me because it became one of the most rewarding parts about well monitoring, and I really enjoyed speaking with landowners about their wells and the state of groundwater in the county. One even gave us tomatoes from their garden!
So, in summary, what I have learned thus far in my service year is that what may seem scary and new at first, can eventually be understood through patience and openness, and through this understanding we grow. I know I’ve been growing a lot recently, and I want to thank GrizzlyCorps for giving me the opportunity to experience these things firsthand, as well as a platform to share my experiences. Additionally, I want to thank the excellent people at my host site, as they have been endlessly patient and kind in giving me a space to learn grow and make mistakes.
Thanks for reading!
Works Cited
Mace, R., Ridgeway, C., Sharp, J., Water, T., & Board, D. (n.d.). Chapter 5 Groundwater is No Longer Secret and Occult - A Historical and Hydrogeologic Analysis of the East case. Retrieved March 12, 2025, from https://stpra.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/5-CH-Mace1.pdf
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