Excessive groundwater pumping in California’s Central Valley is causing homes in the area to massively devalue, according to a new study, as the land over which they are built sinks at an alarming speed.
An analysis by the University of California, Riverside, found that homes in areas where the ground is gradually giving in lost between 2.4 percent and 5.8 percent of their sale value, between $6,689 and $16,165 per home. Overall, California’s Central Valley has lost a total of $1.87 billion in aggregate housing value due to land sinking caused by groundwater pumping, researchers concluded.
“Basically, the land is sinking and so are the property values,” said Mehdi Nemati, a UC Riverside assistant professor of environmental economics and policy who led the study, in a press release. “This is the first time anyone has quantified how much land subsidence costs homeowners in this region.”
Why Is the Ground Sinking in California’s Central Valley?
Groundwater pumping—the process of extracting water from underground sources—is a very important buffer against California’s frequent droughts, especially in areas like the Central Valley, one of the world’s most agriculturally productive regions. But overpumping in recent decades has left those water sources depleted and caused the land to sink…