Rebates can offer solutions to California’s groundwater woes

Many aquifers in California and around the world are being drained of their groundwater because of the combined impacts of excess pumping, shifts in land use, and climate change. However, a new study by scientists at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, published on Oct.18 in Nature Water, may offer a solution - it describes the development and operation of a novel incentive program that uses water rebates to pay for some of the costs of getting stormwater runoff into the ground. The program is called recharge net metering (ReNeM).