Ground Water in the BorregoValley
			Borrego Springs, CA is located in the BorregoValley, a seventy square mile area in northeast San DiegoCounty surrounded by the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park (ABDSP).  It is the County?s only self-sufficient, desert community. The Valley is an isolated basin and studies show that importing water is not an option because of extremely high costs.  The Borrego Valley Aquifer is, therefore, the sole source of water for the Valley.
Unlike other desert states, California grants landowners rights to the groundwater under their property and offers little authority for managing an aquifer as a community resource.  As Colorado River water becomes increasingly scarce and expensive, therefore, new lands in the Borrego Valley are being purchased and converted to agriculture by large corporations, some from as far away as Israel, that mine the aquifer.  The number of acres cultivated in the valley has doubled since 1985.
The BorregoValley with a population of approximately 3,000 and 3,700 acres of agriculture uses roughly 23,000 acre/ft (1 acre/ft. = 326,000 gallons) of water per year.  The Vista Irrigation District in northwestern San DiegoCounty serves approximately 120,000 people and about 1,000 acres of agriculture.  It too uses about 23,000 acre/ft of water per year.
Seventy per cent of the water pumped each year is used by water intensive agriculture, twenty per cent by golf courses that make little attempt to conserve water, and only ten per cent by residential and commercial users and the Anza-Borrego Desert State  Park
The aquifer is being drawn down at a rate nearly five times the recharge rate of 4,800 acre/ft. per year with predictable result.  The ground water level has been dropping over two feet per year for the past twenty years.   One test well fell eight feet between February and August of 2002.  The over draft is already having a deleterious effect on flora and fauna in parts of the ABDSP in and bordering the Borrego Valley, and threatens, among other things, the endangered Peninsular Bighorn Sheep, palm oases, major wildflower habitat, and mesquite woodland.  Borrego Water District and other wells near the periphery of the aquifer that have produced high quality water for years are running dry and being abandoned as the ground water level and quality fall.  There is an abundance of scientific and technical evidence indicating that, at projected extraction rates, the aquifer will reach a critical point in 30 years or less.  Water quality is already being adversely affected.  Mortgage lenders are inquiring about the longevity of the water supply as a condition of making real estate loans in the area.
Residents of the Valley are confronted with a situation that will, sooner than later, destroy our community and critical natural habitat in the Valley.  All attempts to find a solution have failed.  In part, the difficulty lies with a studied ignorance of the unique, local situation on the part of the San Diego County Department of Land Use and Planning.  Despite the very real threat to the aquifer, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, the de facto local government and land use authority for this unincorporated area, has twice dismissed out of hand formal requests from the community to limit or suspend conversion of undeveloped land in the Valley to agriculture in order to conserve water.  The State declined a request for funds to purchase and fallow agricultural lands, the most promising approach, pleading poverty.  Finally, there are a number of conflicting, vested interests involved, most of which seek to achieve their own ends at all costs.
Attempts to cater for all these interest groups in a solution to the ground water problem have reduced the many and various local efforts to solve it to well-intentioned dithering.  Meanwhile, this lack of consensus has paralyzed the Borrego Springs Water District Board of Directors and enabled other elected officials and governmental agencies to demur with impunity.
The damage to human, plant, and animal communities in and around the Valley will be catastrophic if those interests that favor and require unrestricted water use prevail or are merely able to prevent effective action to reduce the wanton overdraft of the aquifer.  It is a classic zero sum gain situation.  Simple arithmetic demonstrates conclusively the hard truth that no solution can satisfy all, or even most, of the interests involved.
Nonetheless, water use must very soon be reduced to a sustainable level that is less than twenty per cent of what it is today.  State law offers no remedies short of a law suit.  Government at all levels has failed and refused to provide any help.  The future of Borrego Springs, the BorregoValley, and significant portions of the Anza-BorregoDesertState Park are bleak indeed. List of Sources