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City presents groundwater storage and sustainable-yield update; staff suggests a cautious 980 acre‑foot annual cap
Summary
City staff and USGS-updated modeling show a combined sustainable pumping yield for Santa Barbara basins of about 980 acre-feet per year and maximum basin storage of roughly 16,000 acre-feet without pumping; staff recommended developing management guidance and a possible "GSP light."
City staff presented the Groundwater Basin Storage and Sustainable Yield Study update to the Water Commission Oct. 26, reporting modeled sustainable pumping rates and an estimate of maximum basin storage capacity and discussing next steps for operational guidance.
Jasmine Showers, a water resources analyst, explained that USGS updated the 2018 groundwater model to produce Excel-based dashboards allowing staff to explore two objectives: sustainable pumping (minimizing drawdown in the Foothill Basin and minimizing seawater intrusion in Storage Unit 1) and maximum storage capacity (modeled without pumping). The basins were modeled under three initial conditions — “empty” (1990), “recovered” (1998) and “recent” (2013) — and runs used precipitation sequences from 2004–2013.
Showers reported that the Foothill Basin sustainable…
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