Domestic well reliability: evaluating supply interruptions from groundwater overdraft, estimating costs and managing economic externalities

Gailey, Robert M.; Lund, Jay R.; Medellín–Azuara, Josué

doi:10.1007/s10040-019-01929-w

Cited by 20 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…However, an intervening wet winter during the 6 and 8 year long drought duration simulations buffers against well failure: when groundwater is allowed to recover after 4 years of drought (as happened during the 2017 wet winter), an average of 498 and 738 less domestic wells fail. These findings support research indicating that limiting groundwater pumping during drought may reduce well failure [46,29], and a general understanding that groundwater pumping can lower proximal groundwater levels [5].…”

Section: Impact Of Drought Duration On Well Failure and Vulnerabilitysupporting

confidence: 87%

“…A previous study estimated that 4 years of drought in the Tulare County, California immediately following the 2017 wet winter would result in about 200-850 domestic well failures [29]. Our modelʼs equivalent scenario (intervening wet winter with an 8 year drought duration) results in a similar range of 585-715 domestic well failures in Tulare County.…”

Section: Impact Of Drought Duration On Well Failure and Vulnerabilitymentioning

confidence: 53%

“…This study assumes that no interim well construction takes place to prepare for falling groundwater levels, such as the practice of pump lowering or well deepening. Pump lowering typically takes place in 6 m intervals (the length of standard discharge piping), and costs around $2000 USD per lowering event [29]. If we consider the cost of pump lowering in all failing wells in the 6 and 8 year drought duration scenarios (in reality some wells will not have room to be lowered) and assuming every failing wellʼs pump is lowered once (some will require more than one lowering), at $2000 USD per 6 m unit of discharge piping, 4037-5460 and 6538-8056 failures correspond to $8.7-$10.4 and $13.8-$15.5 million USD.…”

Section: Implications For Groundwater Management and Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Approaches for interpolating groundwater levels and estimating pump intake depths are demonstrated in this study, though others exist [29,28,66,56]. Groundwater levels provided by a groundwater flow model such as MODFLOW [67] would easily couple to a well failure model, enabling the simulation of water management regimes and the impact of the resulting groundwater level on domestic well failure at arbitrary temporal scales.…”

Section: Applicability To Other Areasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The California Online State Well Completion Report Database [4] and similar well construction databases across the US have allowed near-continental scale estimation of failing wells [28] and well depths [9]. A recent study in the Tulare County, California (around 5000 km 2 ) estimated domestic well supply interruptions from groundwater level decline during the 2012-2016 drought, and the associated costs of maintaining domestic water well supplies [29]. However, to our knowledge, no studies have developed models at the regional aquifer scale (around 50 000 km 2 or greater) that simulate the impact of drought and sustainable groundwater management regimes on domestic well failure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Domestic well vulnerability to drought duration and unsustainable groundwater management in California’s Central Valley

Pauloo

Escriva-Bou

Dahlke

et al. 2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Millions of Californians access drinking water via domestic wells, which are vulnerable to drought and unsustainable groundwater management. Groundwater overdraft and the possibility of longer drought duration under climate change threatens domestic well reliability, yet we lack tools to assess the impact of such events. Here, we leverage 943 469 well completion reports and 20 years of groundwater elevation data to develop a spatially-explicit domestic well failure model covering California's Central Valley. Our model successfully reproduces the spatial distribution of observed domestic well failures during the severe 2012-2016 drought (n = 2027). Next, the impact of longer drought duration (5-8 years) on domestic well failure is evaluated, indicating that if the 2012-2016 drought would have continued into a 6 to 8 year long drought, a total of 4037-5460 to 6538-8056 wells would fail. The same drought duration scenarios with an intervening wet winter in 2017 lead to an average of 498 and 738 fewer well failures. Additionally, we map vulnerable wells at high failure risk and find that they align with clusters of predicted well failures. Lastly, we evaluate how the timing and implementation of different projected groundwater management regimes impact groundwater levels and thus domestic well failure. When historic overdraft persists until 2040, domestic well failures range from 5966 to 10 466 (depending on the historic period considered). When sustainability is achieved progressively between 2020 and 2040, well failures range from 3677 to 6943, and from 1516 to 2513 when groundwater is not allowed to decline after 2020.

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Section: Impact Of Drought Duration On Well Failure and Vulnerabilitysupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Impact Of Drought Duration On Well Failure and Vulnerabilitymentioning

confidence: 53%

Section: Implications For Groundwater Management and Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Applicability To Other Areasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Domestic well vulnerability to drought duration and unsustainable groundwater management in California’s Central Valley

Pauloo

Escriva-Bou

Dahlke

et al. 2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Economic tradeoff between domestic well impact and reduced agricultural production with groundwater drought management: Tulare County, California (USA), case study

Stone

Gailey²,

Lund

2021

Hydrogeol J

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Formal policy analysis can aid resource management where groundwater is used intensively. Approaches for developing equitable and effective pumping allocations for drought are evaluated in the context of the 2012–2016 drought in Tulare County, California, USA. Potential economic impacts of policy alternatives on two user groups with conflicting interests are considered. Tradeoffs between losses of agricultural profit and response costs for domestic wells that run dry are estimated for various maximum groundwater depth policies. A welfare maximizing approach for identifying policies that limit depth to groundwater is evaluated and found to be ineffective because agricultural opportunity costs are much larger than domestic well costs. Adding a fee for additional drought groundwater pumping is proposed as a more impactful and balanced management policy approach. For the case study presented, a fee range of $300 to $600/acre-foot ($300–$600/1,233 m3) yielded an effective groundwater management policy for reducing domestic well impacts from drought and balancing agricultural impacts of drought with the need to replenish additional drought pumping in wetter years. Recent management policies enacted in the study area agree with this finding. These results may provide a useful perspective for analytically examining and developing groundwater management policies near the study area and elsewhere.

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Domestic-well failure mitigation and costs in groundwater management planning: observations from recent groundwater sustainability plans in California, USA

Gailey¹,

Lund

Philipp

2022

Hydrogeol J

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Domestic well reliability: evaluating supply interruptions from groundwater overdraft, estimating costs and managing economic externalities

Cited by 20 publications

References 32 publications

Domestic well vulnerability to drought duration and unsustainable groundwater management in California’s Central Valley

Domestic well vulnerability to drought duration and unsustainable groundwater management in California’s Central Valley

Economic tradeoff between domestic well impact and reduced agricultural production with groundwater drought management: Tulare County, California (USA), case study

Domestic-well failure mitigation and costs in groundwater management planning: observations from recent groundwater sustainability plans in California, USA

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