Governor Gavin Newsom Directs $310 Million for Central Valley Flood-Managed Aquifer Recharge

FRESNO, Calif. — Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1920 into law on Monday, allocating $310 million in state water resilience funding through the Department of Water Resources (DWR) to engineer and construct high-capacity Flood-Managed Aquifer Recharge (Flood-MAR) diversion canals, sediment settling basins, and automated agricultural inundation networks across the San Joaquin Valley.

The legislation operationalizes California's "Big Gulp" water capture strategy, allowing irrigation districts to divert excess high-flow winter and spring atmospheric river storm runoff from the San Joaquin and Kings Rivers onto designated agricultural farmlands and wildlife floodplains to naturally percolate into depleted subterranean aquifers.

Restoring Overdrafted Aquifers to Protect Rural Drinking Water Wells Decades of agricultural groundwater pumping during multi-year droughts have caused severe land subsidence, cracked canal bridges, and dried up thousands of shallow residential drinking water wells in disadvantaged agricultural communities.

"In California, we must adapt to a weather reality characterized by hotter hots, drier dries, and intense, torrential atmospheric river storms," Governor Newsom said during a bill signing at an agricultural recharge basin in Fresno County. "When the rains come, we cannot afford to let billions of gallons of freshwater rush out to sea. AB 1920 invests $310 million in modern canal infrastructure to capture storm floodwaters, replenish our depleted groundwater basins, and protect drinking water for rural families and California agriculture."

Recharge Infrastructure Projects Funded The $310 million package finances:

• High-Capacity Floodwater Diversions: $140 million to construct automated gated intake weirs along the Friant-Kern and Delta-Mendota Canals.
• On-Farm Winter Flooding Rebates: $85 million in matching grants for almond, grape, and alfalfa growers who voluntarily flood dormant acreage during winter storms.
• Dedicated Groundwater Injection Wellfields: $55 million for deep-aquifer direct injection wells in Kern, Tulare, and Kings Counties.
• Rural Drinking Water Well Monitoring: $30 million to install real-time water table sensors and expand emergency well replacement reserves.

Agricultural water districts, environmental justice organizations, and civil engineers commended the legislation, highlighting that underground aquifer storage provides massive water banking without the environmental impacts of surface dams.