Groundwater Pumping Estimates will be Eliminated with Installation of Meters by MAGSA Landowners

To quote MAGSA’s General Manager Matt Hurley, “Estimates and Educated Guesses are tools of fools when attempting to hone the efficient consumption of either water or energy in a groundwater-only groundwater sustainability agency. A variation in data reliability of even five percent can skew results by a wide margin. In irrigation groundwater pumping, management and field application, precise reliable, and temporally relevant data provide the only effective means to achieve the optimal efficiency for either resource.” In other words, MAGSA can’t afford to risk its future with estimates or educated guesses.

With the help of our very motivated landowners, we have done the homework, and we know there are +/- 1,200 agricultural wells located within the MAGSA boundary. As of this post, approximately 1,000 of those wells have been equipped with the requisite meters, telemetry and monitoring contracts and are beginning to report real data into the MAGSA database. As a bonus, most of those landowners have received rebates for their participation by way of a $2.8 million grant from the Bureau of Reclamation

Unfortunately, there are some landowners who are not quite there, and some penalties and associated fees will follow. Regardless, rebates even remain for those non-compliant landowners when they become compliant as long as funds are available.

Bottom line, we are committed to getting the information we need to accurately position MAGSA in the SGMA race to sustainability.