The Giacomini Dairy, home to Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese, is drilling a new well on its property to make up for a depleted aquifer as the drought rampages on. In July, the dairy secured an emergency permit to drill the well, which will supply drinking water for its cows. Now, Marin County is accepting public comments before issuing a coastal permit.
As California enters a predicted fourth year of drought, Marin’s farmers and ranchers are girding themselves. Last year’s autumn rains felt like a godsend to many, but a dry winter could soon reverse any hopes of long-term recovery.
“Our climate has changed,” said Lynn Giacomini Stray, the dairy’s owner. “The gist of it is we needed to be more self-sustaining.”
Giacomini Dairy, where celebrated cheeses like Point Reyes Blue and Toma are produced, already had two once-reliable wells. But both increasingly fall short of expectations, pumping as little as five gallons per minute and sometimes drying up completely. The wells mainly provide drinking water for the dairy’s roughly 400 cows, each of which consumes 40 to 50 gallons a day. Drinking water for the dairy’s employees and visitors comes from North Marin Water District’s municipal supply.
The dairy trucked in water for the first time in decades from June to October last year, with financial help from a county program. The winter rains meant trucking wasn’t necessary this summer, but they weren’t enough to recharge the aquifer.
The health of coastal agriculture depends on verdant wintertime grasses and brimming livestock ponds. Farmers can plant grass seed, tweak soil acidity and dredge ponds to restore their full capacity, but these measures can’t make up for a lack of precipitation. Dairies are among the first to feel the strain.
“If we don’t get enough rain to really make a difference, there are a lot of dairies that are really on the brink of going out of business, unless they have a really great water source,” said Stefan Parnay, the county’s agricultural commissioner.
Ms. Giacomini is banking on the strength of the new well, which she hopes it will pump up to 20 gallons per minute. Its location, just uphill from a secluded wooded creek bed and more than half a mile from the dairy buildings, makes it more promising. “We foresee climate change and the ongoing in-and-out drought becoming the norm,” Ms. Stray wrote in her application to the county, “and a productive well will help continue to run our operation.”
The drought forced many ranchers to sell cattle, but Giacomini Dairy, which depends on restaurants for half its business, had already downsized when Covid brought that industry to a halt in 2020. Ms. Stray has considered culling cows, but the dairy has so far avoided it, and the herd has more recently returned to pre-pandemic levels.
In her letter to county planners, Ms. Stray pointed out that since 2020, the dairy had reduced its daily water consumption from 12,000 to under 9,000 gallons. It installed milking robots, which use less water than traditional methods, and developed a system to reuse dairy sanitation water.