State water officials offered up their bleakest annual water
supply prediction ever Tuesday in what amounts to an early warning
about the coming year.
By Mike Taugher, McClatchy News Service
State water officials offered up their bleakest annual water supply prediction ever Tuesday in what amounts to an early warning about the coming year.
Customers of the State Water Project, the state’s largest water distribution system, were told they may get as little as 5 percent of their requested Delta water supply next year. That figure assumes very dry conditions, however, and the number is almost certain to improve.
Last year, the state warned agencies early on to plan for 15 percent of their supply but eventually increased the number to 40 percent.
“We have to assume we’re going to a fourth year of drought and we need to respond accordingly,” said Lester Snow, director of the state Department of Water Resources. “It’s imperative we do as much as we can to conserve water.”
Three dry years have left reservoirs low and Sierra watersheds dry enough to soak up a big share of next year’s snowmelt.
In addition, new regulations imposed to halt the sharp decline of Delta smelt and other fish could take another slice out of the supply of agencies that depend on water pumped out of the Delta, including parts of the East Bay, Kern County, Los Angeles and the rest of Southern California.
A spokeswoman for Zone 7, the water agency for Dublin, Pleasanton and Livermore, said that in a worst-case scenario it could draw on groundwater and possible rationing to weather the lack of storms.
“We can’t sustain this forever,” said Zone 7 spokeswoman Boni Brewer, whose customers get 80 percent of their water from the Delta. “Long-term, we can’t sustain this. Short-term, were saying that we would be OK.”
If 2010 brings average rain and snow, Zone 7 and other users can expect just 20 percent to 40 percent of their contracted amounts, depending on how new Delta water rules are applied.
By comparison, the contractors have been getting about two-thirds of their water requests in the last decade.
Water managers drew on stored water and released relatively generous shares of water in 2007 and 2008 even though those years were dry. But by early this year, reservoirs were severely drawn down and supplies were cut sharply.
Because the cutbacks came at the same time new environmental rules went into effect, San Joaquin Valley politicians and others blamed their problems on legal protections for Delta smelt and other fish.
Those measures were limited in effect, however, amounting to just 500,000 acre-feet, less than 10 percent of expected water supplies out of the Delta. The lack of rain and snow cost water users more than three times as much, according to the Department of Water Resources.
This year is starting out potentially worse for state contractors because a key reservoir near Gilroy is low and because a second environmental permit to protect salmon, steelhead, sturgeon and even killer whales will be put into effect for the first time, said John Leahigh, a water supply engineer for the state.
Meanwhile, signs that El Nino conditions are strengthening offer some encouragement. El Nino refers to a pattern of warmer sea surface temperatures off the Pacific Coast of South America that can bring wetter conditions to Southern California and drier conditions to the Pacific Northwest.
Northern California is in a transition zone where El Nino could mean wet, dry or normal conditions, but the fact that the pattern is showing up a little further west than normal could mean a slightly higher chance of more rain and snow in Northern California, said Kelly Redmond, deputy director and regional climatologist at the Desert Research Institute’s Western Regional Climate Center in Reno.
“It (El Nino) increases the odds but it doesn’t offer a guarantee,” Redmond said.
