Mike De Jager: Why isn’t that water recharging our aquifers?

I am a farmer who deeply appreciates water and how important it is to our valley. And yet it is astonishing how it is wasted right under our noses! Along the recently refurbished Highway 99 there are huge basins that do not have a drop of water in them. At the same time, Owens Creek, Mariposa Creek, Deadman’s Creek, Duck Slough and several other small tributaries flow under Highway 99 and eventually head out to sea.

Don’t you suppose someone would have enough common sense to direct a portion of that runoff into these huge basins to recharge the groundwater? Who’s in charge? Where does the buck stop? Hundreds and hundreds of acre feet of potential groundwater recharge gone because ...?

This story was originally published February 1, 2016 at 12:10 PM with the headline "Mike De Jager: Why isn’t that water recharging our aquifers?."