The Realities of Adaptive Groundwater Management

This chapter introduces the book and reviews the concept of adaptive management. The rationale for and benefits of adaptive management are summarized. So are the difficulties in carrying out adaptive management. Chino Basin is a large groundwater basin in Southern California, relied upon heavily by a large population and economy. The effective and sustainable management of Chino Basin is a high stakes endeavor. In this location, adaptive management of the groundwater resource (and interrelated other resources) emerged and has been institutionalized, through significant effort and with considerable difficulty but also considerable success.

The Chino Basin in Southern California is part of the Santa Ana River watershed. This chapter describes the groundwater basin itself, which is fed by precipitation runoff from the adjacent mountains and overlying stream channels and contributes outflow to the Santa Ana River. The chapter also describes the river system, including areas upstream and downstream of Chino Basin. Although human activity has altered the natural physical system, especially during the past century, the fundamental elements of the basin’s inflow and outflow, its storage capacity, and its location within the river system and its relationship to the other streams and groundwater basins within the watershed, are essential to understanding the resource management opportunities and constraints of Chino Basin.

People have used Chino Basin groundwater and the surface streams in the basin for many years. The primary early use was for agriculture (including ranching as well as crop cultivation) and household supply. Over time, as development of the area proceeded and water use grew, the first efforts to enhance and protect the basin’s water resources were initiated, which included the capture and retention of stream flows to encourage groundwater replenishment. Multiple water companies, water agencies, and water associations were formed during the early 1900s and many participated in these conservation and protection efforts. Those efforts had ramifications for downstream users outside Chino Basin as well. Communities and individual users organized the Chino Basin Protective Association for several purposes but especially to guard against downstream efforts to limit Chino Basin water production and water conservation activities. This chapter traces the growth of developed water use in the basin from the 1800s into the twentieth century, and the formation of the Protective Association.

Conflict and compromise with downstream water users in Orange County, California, has been a defining characteristic of and shaping influence on groundwater use and management in Chino Basin. The period from the 1930s through the 1950s described in this chapter featured recurring litigation with Orange County interests, which spurred further organization and collaboration among Chino Basin water users including the formation of numerous water districts. Groundwater reliance in Chino Basin intensified, which contributed to the beginnings of groundwater overdraft there. By the mid-1900s, studies by the California Department of Water Resources sharpened water users’ understanding of what was and was not possible in terms of the development and use of local supplies and contributed to the start of imported water use in the Santa Ana River watershed.

Through the 1960s urbanization advanced rapidly throughout the region, which increased water demands but also paved over land surfaces and storm water channels that had previously allowed precipitation and runoff to percolate into the groundwater basin. Imported water became an important element of water supplies within Chino Basin, but overdrafting of groundwater supplies continued as established agricultural enterprises and expanding municipal and industrial users competed for the limited supply. Another lawsuit from Orange County – the third in four decades – produced new arrangements governing water outflow from the upper area of the Santa Ana River watershed (including Chino Basin) to the lower area (Orange County). The resulting Santa Ana River Judgment in 1969 layered another set of institutions on the landscape and also spurred the initiation of a concerted effort to develop groundwater governance and management arrangements in Chino Basin.

This chapter recounts the efforts to address groundwater management in Chino Basin after the Santa Ana River Judgment. That effort required the establishment of processes for making decisions and enforcing them. Groundwater users and others created a Chino Basin Water Association and began discussing how to assign rights and limit groundwater use. They negotiated a Chino Basin groundwater management regime, drawing upon from other southern California groundwater basins. There were innovations in the Chino Basin adjudication, but the underlying legal rationale for the suit remained the same – a doctrine known as mutual prescription. As the Chino Basin case moved to court, however, the California Supreme Court issued a decision that significantly undermined the mutual prescription approach, forcing changes to the design for groundwater management in Chino Basin. The revised agreement was approved by the court in the 1978 Chino Basin Judgment.

The early period of management under the Chino Basin Judgment featured some successes but a gradual build-up of frustrations. Provisions of the judgment covering pumping limitations and basin replenishment were put in place, and the first reallocation of pumping rights from agriculture to municipal and industrial use was carried out. As the 1980s went on, concerns arose among some parties about basin planning, the management of basin storage capacity, and groundwater quality degradation, prompting some reconsideration of what the overall basin management program should address. By the end of the decade, those concerns translated into a legal challenge by some Chino Basin parties to the ways in which the Judgment was being administered. That lawsuit both precipitated and foreshadowed a turning point in the basin governance and management regime.

In the 1990s, the dissatisfaction with the management of groundwater storage and water quality erupted in a period of open hostility in Chino Basin. The rift entailed not only changes to the basin management approach but a revision to the basin governance structure. A group of groundwater users organized a restructuring of a key component of the basin governance structure, the court-appointed Chino Basin Watermaster. The existing Watermaster entity resisted, and the dispute produced years of turmoil and uncertainty. The judge and a pair of appointed experts became deeply involved in the process also. Toward the end of the decade, a new watermaster was appointed for an interim period and charged with a substantial overhaul of groundwater management in Chino Basin toward a more adaptive program.

Although the controversy of the 1990s focused on the identity and composition of the watermaster, the broader issues were about the overall approach to managing the basin. From 1998 through 2000, the parties and other stakeholders in Chino Basin forged a new management program – the Optimum Basin Management Program (OBMP) – and negotiated a “Peace Agreement” that provided a framework for how they would implement it. It was the launch of an adaptive groundwater management approach in Chino Basin. The OBMP and Peace Agreement embodied a more active approach to managing water levels, basin replenishment, the reuse of treated wastewater, the improvement of water quality, and redressing land subsidence. It would require an intensive data gathering and analysis effort, actions on multiple issues – some simultaneously, some sequentially – and continual monitoring, feedback, and adjustment.

This is the first in a sequence of chapters focusing explicitly on the adaptive management of Chino Basin under the OBMP and Peace Agreement. It begins with the continued urbanization process and its effects on water use, groundwater recharge, and wastewater production. These were all important drivers to which groundwater management in Chino Basin had to adapt. Another was the changes to the price and reliability of imported water supplies. Those supplies had become important elements of water supply and basin management in the second half of the twentieth century, but by the 2000s it was apparent that they were becoming uncertain as well as more expensive. One way of adapting to that circumstance was increased reliance on the reuse of treated wastewater, but that came with its own constraints and challenges. Another adaptation has been a renewed investment in facilities for stormwater capture for basin replenishment, through the implementation of a Recharge Master Plan, with periodic updates. Another adaptive management program was designed and initiated for understanding and stopping land subsidence. Together, these new endeavors illustrate the more active and adaptive approach to basin management while also highlighting how demanding it is.

One critical and ongoing challenge of groundwater management in Chino Basin has been balancing on one hand the need and desire to avoid excessive groundwater depletion and, on the other hand, the need to avoid exporting excessive and/or poor quality water from the basin and creating negative impacts on the Santa Ana River and water users downstream. Groundwater quality throughout the watershed is regulated by the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board. In the 2000s, Chino Basin parties, led by the Chino Basin Watermaster and Inland Empire Utilities Agency, negotiated with the Regional Board to design a new approach to basin management known as Hydraulic Control. This management concept involved adjusting groundwater levels within the basin to limit the outflow of poorer quality groundwater, increasing the extraction, treatment, and reuse of degraded groundwater, and enlarging the reuse of treated urban wastewater for groundwater recharge. Building, financing, and expanding the groundwater treatment facilities – known as “desalters” – and reaching agreement among the Chino Basin parties about how to lower groundwater levels in part of the basin, maintain groundwater levels in the rest of the basin, and allocate the costs and benefits of the new management approach led to the negotiation and adoption of “Peace II,” a set of additional agreements added to the earlier Peace Agreement.

Chino Basin includes a large area of designated critical habitat for endangered species, which is also a valuable wetland and green space in the middle of the heavily urbanized and developed landscape. State and federal agencies along with local actors including the Chino Basin Watermaster have implemented an adaptive management program for habitat conservation efforts for threatened and endangered species in Chino Basin. In addition, there are several groundwater contamination sites (“plumes”) in Chino Basin, which have necessitated the development of pumping and treatment options to contain and remediate them. Protecting and improving groundwater quality in the basin has become part of the location and operation of the desalter facilities described in Chap. 11. Overall, Chino Basin groundwater management has had to adapt to and incorporate contamination remediation and habitat preservation.

A core element of adaptive groundwater management is revisiting and reassessing basin conditions, in order to determine whether aggregate levels of pumping can be sustained or need to be adjusted. Conflict is likely to arise if basin yield that is available for use has to be reset downward and pumpers have to share in the reduction. In the 2010s, the reevaluation of Chino Basin’s yield resulted in a recommended downward adjustment, which triggered a lengthy process of difficult negotiation which included court filings. Another downward adjustment was made in 2020. Also during 2018–2020, Chino Basin leaders and stakeholders undertook updates to the Optimum Basin Management Program (OBMP), and the development of a Storage Management Plan in light of numerous changes that have occurred since 2000. This chapter covers these recent episodes in Chino Basin’s experience with the realities of adaptive management.

Adaptive groundwater management in Chino Basin entails a highly polycentric set of institutional arrangements that involve multiple local, state, and federal agencies as well as numerous private entities. This chapter presents the organizational and interorganizational structures and relationships involved in the governance and administration of Chino Basin. It begins with the ways in which information gathering, reporting, and accountability practices have been institutionalized in Chino Basin. It includes the stakeholder engagement and decision making processes that have developed in the basin, with specific focus on the practices of the Chino Basin Watermaster. In addition, this chapter addresses California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) enacted in 2014: what if anything it means for Chino Basin, and what lessons the Chino Basin experience has to offer for the nearly 100 other groundwater basins in California where management institutions and plans are being implemented currently.

This closing chapter returns to topics raised in the introductory chapter, about what adaptive management means – not only in concept but in practice. Chino Basin faces a future of continual adaptation, as everything from water use efficiency to treatment technologies to climate change and more continue to develop in ways that require adaptive response. The experiences of Chino Basin are reviewed with this aim in mind. Managing adaptively also means placing a premium on learning, which is an aspect of resource management that has been exemplified in Chino Basin. The Chino Basin case shows that much can be gained through adaptive management, but it requires a sustained commitment which is not easy to maintain. This chapter includes an assessment of the ways in which groundwater management in Chino Basin has been a success story despite the difficult passages and multiple conflicts through which the basin and its users have journeyed along the way.