Presentation short abstract

This paper discusses the implementation of California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. It shows how science establishes scarcity in a way that allows the legal redefinition of groundwater from an open-access commons to the property of individual landowners.

Presentation long abstract

This paper assesses the efforts of a local water agency in California's Cuyama Valley to make groundwater visible in ways that enable its management. In contrast to surface water, groundwater has always been an open access resource with little regulation In California, which has favored industrial capitalist agriculture. Facing a crisis of depletion in the 2000s, the state government passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which charges local agencies with creating and enacting plans for regulating its extraction.

I track this process in the Valley of Cuyama, home to massive industrial carrot farms that have been mining the groundwater for 50 years and a small and scattered population. The mantra "management is measurement" guides the efforts of local agencies to make groundwater visible through scientific research involving well reports, satellite imagery, geological assays, streamflow and precipitation gauges, etc. This paper highlights what is not visible in this process: how this science joins with water law to establish scarcity and redefine an open-access commons as the property of individual landowners.