Nick Rahaim, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Rain storms this winter have swelled water in Lake Sonoma to near-record levels, submerging once-dry boat ramps, repeatedly flooding the dockside marina and banishing the bath tub rings that for years were a telltale sign of the state’s prolonged and withering drought.
Only in the El Niño winter of 1995 did the reservoir in northwestern Sonoma County — the North Bay’s largest, created behind Warm Springs Dam in 1982 — rise higher than it did early this week, when it topped 125 percent of its capacity, with enough water to cover 300,000 football fields 1-foot-deep. The bountiful supply is more than twice the volume of water held in the lake in November 2014, amid the five-year drought that forced conservation of drinking water and cut into recreational opportunities for boaters and others.
The outlook now could hardly be more different.
With torrents of runoff coming into Lake Sonoma and Lake Mendocino, the Russian River’s smaller reservoir to the north, dam managers are now cranking up their releases to preserve room for additional storms. Another front is expected to arrive Wednesday night.
“We’re releasing a lot of water like we’re supposed to — we need to keep space open for the next big storm,” said Mike Dillabough, chief of Operations and Readiness division for the United States Army Corps of Engineers’ San Francisco Division. “But we’re told it’s burgeoning on a record year.”
Read more at: Wet winter banishes Northern California drought, fills North Bay reservoirs | The Press Democrat
Tag: reservoirs
Drought recedes as North Coast rivers, reservoirs swell from storms
Mary Callahan, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
A historic drought that parched the landscape and turned water conservation into a civic duty already seemed a distant memory on the North Coast when a series of powerful storms slammed into California over the weekend, dumping enough moisture to swamp lake- and streamside buildings that stood high and dry at the peak of the drought.
With local reservoirs now filled past capacity for this time of year and the Russian River still swollen with runoff, the U.S. Drought Monitor said Thursday that more than 41 percent of California — including the whole northern part of the state — is officially drought-free, a marked and gratifying shift from the weeks and months leading up to the new year, when even seasonally wet winter weather was not yet enough to declare the drought over.
Sonoma County Water Agency spokesman Brad Sherwood said Thursday that’s all changed.
“We always said that if we got above-average rainfall in consecutive years that we’d be sitting good,” Sherwood said, “and this series of storms definitely put the drought out, without a doubt.”
Read more at: Drought recedes as North Coast rivers, reservoirs swell from storms | The Press Democrat
Op-Ed: When a right goes wrong: Vineyard frost protection, river flows and salmon
Richard Morat, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Richard Morat is a retired federal fishery biologist, pursues a conservation vocation and advocates for ecosystem sustainability.
An extreme frost in 2008 drove managers of budding vineyards to dewater reaches of the Russian River overnight. Water spray protects buds from freeze damage. Many juvenile salmon were killed by the dewatering. These salmon are protected by the Endangered Species Act, which requires that this not happen again.
The event spurred public resource agencies and other well-meaning organizations to rush to the rescue with plans for offstream storage that would reduce the need for simultaneous and cumulatively massive direct diversions from the river. The concept of diverting and storing water during wetter periods was sound, but it is not being carried out properly. Public agencies and organizations were too accommodating to the diverters and have made a bad situation worse.
The problem in implementation was in not defining “wetter periods.” To growers wanting to reduce costs, wetter periods means any time flow is in excess of the bare minimum that must be left in the channel. Unfortunately, this means that flows needed to maintain salmon populations will become less and less frequent and eventually all that will be left is an operation of extremes — either minimum flows or infrequent large flood flows. Minimum flow standards were not meant to be a long duration steady-state condition, but on the Russian they have become the norm.
Growers quickly realized that the offstream storage originally justified as an emergency frost-control measure could also be used for irrigation and heat control, further reducing wet season flows required for salmon. Many applications for changes in water rights to divert flows to offstream storage have been filed. Some have been approved by the state Water Resources Control Board. Likely many more applications will be filed in future years as growers seek to reduce costs. The challenge is balancing the expansion of water rights with the protection of other beneficial uses. Coming to grips with limits to growth is the challenge for all of us.
The answer to this dilemma is quite simple — require permits for offstream storage whereby the diverter can take only water that is surplus to the reasonable needs of other beneficial uses. For diverters to capture surplus water they need to take big gulps when the flows are well in excess of the minimum flow standards. This means investing in bigger pipelines and pumps to increase diversion rates and fill storage quickly during high flows when excess water is available.
We can accommodate growth in the wine industry without killing salmon in the Russian River, but it requires good faith on the part of the wine industry and a willingness to pay what is required to protect the environment.
Read more at: Close to Home: When a right goes wrong: Vineyard frost protection, river flows and salmon | The Press Democrat