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The Yolo County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to extend the county’s moratorium on new agricultural wells for one year. The decision comes as the effects of the 2020-22 drought on the county’s groundwater resources come into focus.
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Recent research showed that overreliance on groundwater during the drought caused irreparable harm to the county’s aquifers. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the loss of groundwater storage in the Sacramento Valley amounted to approximately the annual water consumption of San Francisco. The problem is especially severe in the Capay Valley, Dunnigan Hills and portions of central Yolo County.
Yolo County implemented a 45-day moratorium in August 2025. In October 2025, the county extended the moratorium until Aug. 25, 2026.
Members of the county’s Ag Well Working Group favored ending the pause, according to a Dozens of county residents submitted written feedback or offered public comment. Most who attended the meeting supported extending the moratorium. Several said extending the pause was in the best interest of the county’s small farmers.
Rachel Long, who owns a farm in Zamora, said she supports extending the moratorium. Long’s property is “entirely dependent on well water.” Long worries the damage done to the aquifer has affected the well drawing water for her home, which has gone dry twice, she said.
“There’s nothing worse than turning on a faucet to just have air come out,” Long said. “This is the reality of living in our community.”
Others, like the Yolo County Farm Bureau, opposed the county taking steps to regulate groundwater because state regulations already do so, according to a submitted by Farm Bureau President Lee Smith. The county received signed by Yolo County residents with language identical to Smith’s that “respectfully urge the Board to respect the state’s groundwater management framework.”
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Staff presented the board with three options: let the moratorium expire, extend it for up to one year or craft a more targeted pause to help the most affected areas. The pause was implemented to give the county and the Yolo Subbasin Groundwater Agency time to develop a sustainable plan, but the moratorium is a “blunt instrument,” Supervisor Lucas Frerichs acknowledged.
“Temporary moratorium is one of the tools in the toolkit,” Frerichs said. “It’s not the end-all, be-all.”
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The supervisors also debated whether to require meters on any new wells after the moratorium. Requiring meters would allow the county to develop a more quantitative policy for groundwater use, but meters are not a standard feature of wells.
The supervisors instructed staff to draft an ordinance requiring all new wells to be “meter-ready,” meaning the wells must be designed to allow a meter to be easily added if warranted. County staff estimated that installing meters or meter-ready wells would cost between $1,700 and $6,000.
The board directed staff to continue giving supervisors regular updates on staff’s progress as the county works toward a sustainable groundwater management plan. The board plans to vote on the meter-ready well ordinance in October.
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