[blam]

May be a source of fresh water for southern California farmers?

[RightWhale]

There are underground rivers. The flow rate is low, although the volume may be large. Any such rivers in California would supplement surface runoff from the Sierra Nevada. That might suffice for a few small towns or farms, but California will have to look to desalinization as their usage gets heavier.

[seastay]

They need it, for ever gallon of strawberries, it takes two gallons to quench the thirst of the manual laborers and their families, since California farmers have no incentive to innovatively mechanize .

[Carry_Okie]

May be a source of fresh water for southern California farmers?

No way.

The federill government is more likely to consider such streams critical to habitat and breeding. These streams would thus be a way to regulate the use of private wells that might draw off the water source. Can't harm the ocean ya know, that belongs to the whole earth. ;-)

[concentric circles]

Keith Brackpool, British CEO of Cadiz Inc., tried to sell a deal in which he would store water from the Colorado River, during wet years, in a fresh water aquifer in the Mojave Desert which would then be pumped to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California in dry years. They already owned the desert land.

Opponents claimed there was no way to determine how much pumping from the aquifer would be too much, drying up springs and wells.

He was smart enough to give a quarter million dollars to Gray Davis but the deal soured when he couldn't win over Dianne Feinstein who has made desert protection a hallmark of her career in the senate. The Water District narrowly voted down the proposal.

You know what they say out west - "Whiskey's for drinking, water's for fight'n."

Cadiz Groundwater Storage and Dry-Year Supply Program

Mojave Water Grab