74 CONSERVATION OF GROUND WATER 



well failure or damage were reported as a result of the re- 

 charge operations. The recharge was discontinued, how- 

 ever, because of the objections raised by other users of water 

 in the Kaweah watercourse. 



The scope of the unsolved ground-water problems in San 

 Joaquin Valley was recognized in the comprehensive plan 

 submitted by the Bureau of Reclamation in 1945: 



If the State Water Plan and the works now under construction 

 by the Bureau of Reclamation in the southernmost part of the 

 Central Valley are to be fully effective as planned: (1) artificial 

 infiltration must be accomplished in an over-all average rate 

 sufficient that surplus water can be conveyed to underground 

 storage whenever available; (2) water must be held in artificial 

 underground storage in the extremely large aggregate volume 

 necessary for full equalization of irrigation requirements over 

 an indefinite term of years — for the area south of the Chow- 

 chilla River this volume seemingly would be as great as 16 

 million acre-feet; (3) water must be held in long-term under- 

 ground storage in this great volume without extensive damage 

 to lands by water-logging; (4) substantially all this water artifi- 

 cially stored must be salvaged by pumping from wells. However, 

 the factual geologic and hydrologic information now available 

 gives no assurance that these fundamental requirements can be 

 accomplished for all parts of the area. 



For the past decade the ground-water investigations in 

 San Joaquin Valley have been spearheaded by the U.S. 

 Bureau of Reclamation rather than by the state and Fed- 

 eral research agencies which have Ions; been active in other 

 areas of California and in other states. Thus the studies can 

 be directed especially toward the critical ground-water ques- 

 tions raised by the Central Valley Project, and in part must 

 necessarily be directed toward answering the local opposi- 

 tion to certain phases of that project. However a great 

 volume of basic data of general public value is also being 

 collected. Little of this material is published, although the 

 results of many studies are being reported in mimeographed 

 or limited editions. A general summary of the investiga- 



