Monday March 6, 2023
County of San Joaquin —
Water agencies in California’s Central Valley and East Bay took a major step forward in February on a joint pilot project to diversify water supplies, enhance drought resilience and restore a depleted aquifer through groundwater recharge.
For the first time, the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) extracted groundwater banked deep below farmland in San Joaquin County into the utility’s Mokelumne aqueducts, which convey surface water from Pardee Reservoir in the Sierra Nevada foothills to customers in the East Bay.
This extraction was a key step for DREAM – short for Demonstration Recharge, Extraction and Aquifer Management – a pilot project involving EBMUD, North San Joaquin Water Conservation District, San Joaquin County, and Eastern Water Alliance. The unique urban-agricultural partnership is designed to improve water supply reliability for both San Joaquin County farmers and EBMUD customers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties while recharging the critically over-drafted Eastern San Joaquin County Groundwater Basin.