Trona on the Edge

I was intrigued by this article about the state trying to corral water usage in Trona, an especially-dry place, against local opposition. At work in 1993 and 1994, I did Chemical Mass Balance analyses for suspended dust at the Trona playa, on behalf of North American Chemical Corporation. I've never been there, actually, but I'm otherwise familiar with the place:

Perched on the edge of a mostly dry salt lake, Trona has no source of clean water and for at least 70 years has relied on groundwater pumped from wells 30 miles away in the Indian Wells Valley.

Two pipelines snake through a dry-wash canyon delivering water to the town’s historic mineral plant, where it is used in the production of soda ash, boron and salt. Any surplus is then treated and sold for residential use. 

That source of water, however, is in jeopardy due to legislation passed seven years ago in Sacramento to protect aquifers throughout the state.

Protection in the desert isn’t cheap, and a local water agency is ordering the mineral plant to help by contributing roughly $30 million over five years. Or stop pumping. 

...As Ronnie sees it, if the mineral plant loses its water, so does Trona, and their home for 35 years would cease to exist.

Water wars are central to the history of the American West. Although the battle taking place in Trona and the Indian Wells Valley may not be as epic as the wrangling over the Colorado River, the outcome will have implications not just for the Tolberts but for the rest of California.

Once one of the state’s most dependable sources of water, groundwater can account for up to 60% of the state’s supply during a drought. 9But its reliability was abruptly checked nearly 10 years ago when California was in drought. As rivers dried and reservoirs emptied, more wells were dug, pumping continued, and land surfaces began to sink. Canals cracked, roads buckled, and sediments, once depressed, would no longer be able to store underground water.

In 2014, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed three bills aimed to protect the state’s groundwater. Collectively they are known as SGMA (pronounced “sigma”) for the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

The state Department of Water Resources was given the authority to oversee the new law. Of California’s 515 groundwater basins, it identified 21 that were “critically overdrafted.” The law required those basins to form local groundwater authorities and come up with plans by 2020 to preserve the underground supply by 2040.

Of those 21 basins, the Indian Wells Valley — about 600 square miles south of the Owens Valley — presents a unique challenge, both politically and technically. First, it has neither rivers nor streams nor lakes to draw on; to restore its groundwater, it will have to import water.

Second, the valley straddles three counties — Kern, Inyo and San Bernardino — each with competing interests. The largest city is Ridgecrest, population of 27,000, due largely to the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, a massive federal installation exempt from state laws.

And then there is Trona, which lies outside the valley but is dependent upon it.

...“We’re way behind the curve,” he said. “We have had at least three decades of a declining water table. At what point of time do we take ownership and solve this problem?”