Opportunities and Incentives to Enhance California's Groundwater Supplies and Improve Water Quality

Managed recharge is increasingly applied to enhance groundwater supplies and also offers opportunities to improve groundwater quality. Key considerations include the nature of water sources, the composition of soils, the potential presence of legacy contaminants, and biogeochemical processes that can reduce contaminant loads during infiltration. This presentation will summarize California's need to augment groundwater resources, and show results from recent field, laboratory, and modeling studies that show how and where improvements can be achieved. This work is being done in the context of a regional program to incentivize resource enhancement through net metering of groundwater pumping.

Speaker: Andy Fischer, UC Santa Cruz