Fresno Water Officials Welcome El Niño Storms — If They Can Get Enough Pumps
Strong El Niño storms are coming this winter, and water managers in Fresno say they’re ready to capture the rain — mostly.
Laura Ramos, director of the California Water Institute at Fresno State, says previous flood emergencies taught water agencies to treat excess storm water as an opportunity instead of a problem. The shift: instead of flushing storm water into rivers as fast as possible, agencies now pump it into recharge basins — giant pits that send water underground to feed aquifers.
But there’s a catch. “We are still in need of more pumps to move the high volume of water that is expected,” Ramos told Central Valley Daily.
Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order in 2023 allowing water agencies to quickly capture excess rainfall and use it to recharge groundwater basins. He has already declared a state of emergency for this year’s expected storms, as have several San Joaquin Valley counties.
Fresno — a city of half a million — uses 125 million gallons of water daily from surface and groundwater sources. Groundwater supplies rely heavily on recharge basins in recent years.
“I’m excited and worried,” Ramos said. “We are already learning how to make these wet years an opportunity instead of thinking of them as a nuisance like we did before. I’m just still a little worried because I think we’ve made progress, we still have a long way to go.”
Early 2023 storms caught water managers by surprise and left families cleaning up flood disasters as storms pounded the state for weeks.
The Breakdown
- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects El Niño will bring wetter-than-average periods this winter.
- Recharge basins are man-made pits that capture surface water and send it underground, where it eventually supplies homes and farms.
- Newsom’s 2023 executive order lets water agencies quickly capture excess rainfall to recharge groundwater basins.
- Water managers say they still need more pumps to handle the volume expected.
What This Means for You
Fresno uses 125 million gallons of water daily to serve half a million residents, drawing from surface and groundwater sources. Groundwater supplies rely heavily on recharge basins in recent years. Water managers say they need more pumps to capture this winter’s expected rain. Newsom issued an executive order in 2023 enabling agencies to quickly capture excess rainfall, and he declared a state of emergency for this year’s expected storms.
What to Watch
Ramos says agencies need more pumps. The material doesn’t say how many they have, how many they need, or whether the state is funding that gap. Who pays for the pumps that aren’t there yet — and who takes the hit if the rain arrives before the equipment does?
A bigger question: why does California still treat wet years as emergencies to declare instead of infrastructure to plan for? The state has had multiple flood-and-drought cycles. If water managers are “still a little worried” and “still have a long way to go” after years of storms, what’s missing — the money, the political will, or the actual plan?
