Like all farmers, I am painfully aware that agriculture cannot survive without reliable water supplies. Groundwater, in particular, is important to the San Joaquin Valley. Terranova Ranch relies on it for 90% of its annual supply, which includes irrigating 5,500 acres of farmland. Yet for decades we've been using more groundwater than is replenished. Unabated, this practice threatens our long-term water supplies and ultimately our industry.

Our region needs to do more to capture water in wet years so that we have it for dry years. Terranova Ranch, with the help of Kings River Conservation District, recently completed contracts to launch the McMullin On-Farm Flood Capture and Recharge Project with the California Department of Water Resources. The project will divert high flood flows from the Kings River onto Terranova's agricultural land to recharge groundwater basins.

The area around Kings River in Fresno County is highly susceptible to flooding when snowmelt or excessive winter rains overburden Pine Flat Dam and the James Weir. However, in dry summer months, groundwater is heavily used to meet supply needs, and much of the time those underground aquifers are not refilled.

Our project allocates 1,500 acres to capture high flows, recharge local groundwater basins and store that water for dry years. We estimate that during periods of flood flow along the Kings River, we will capture more than 9,000 acre-feet per month, about enough to irrigate 3,000 acres during the summer and about 5% of the annual overdraft for the entire Kings Basin. Not only will this protect people and property from flooding, but it will also help provide a more reliable water supply, particularly during drought.

Terranova participated in this project because we feel that the Valley's groundwater overdraft problem has reached crisis proportions and the agricultural community must be part of the solution.

Over the last 90 years, the Valley has consistently used more groundwater than is replenished in underground aquifers, resulting in a cumulative groundwater deficit of 120 million acre-feet of water -- enough water to fill Lake Tahoe.

This overpumping often causes the land above underground aquifers to sink, threatening wells, dams, levees and other infrastructure. The replacement of Sack Dam, which supplies water for 45,000 acres of farmland, recently was called into question after it was discovered that the land around the dam sank 2 feet due to over-pumping of groundwater. If we continue to simply drill deeper and take more without working to replenish groundwater, we will cause irreparable harm to our water supply, our industry and our community.

The Valley needs to better manage groundwater, not just to maintain the short-term agricultural integrity of the region, but to prepare for what is coming. The state's weather patterns are changing to include more extreme floods and droughts. Experts predict more precipitation will fall as rain, instead of snow, leading to less snowpack. The snowpack we have will melt faster than before, rather than being stored on mountaintops. That means we may have less overall water supply if we are unable to capture and use floodwater.

Terranova's new project is not the first time we've allowed floodwaters onto our land. We recently partnered in a Natural Resources Conservation Service innovation grant project to see how such a project would impact an operating farm. We found we were able to accommodate floodwater without changing crops and actually benefited by being able to use some of the water for irrigation -- all while recharging and storing groundwater for future use.

Our recent project was a first step. We hope our neighbors will join our efforts to build out a flood diversion and on-farm groundwater recharge system that increases by more than three-fold our flood-disposal capacity onto our farmland. Water is agriculture's lifeblood. Like the crops we grow, we must tend to and care for the water sources that are so critical to our region and state.