Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Office of Emergency Services, stated in a letter to Tulare County officials the state will continue to provide some funding for drought relief after June 30. In a letter dated May 9, Ghilarducci stated, “the state will continue to provide temporary funds for up to a year for the delivery of potable water for existing program participants in order to maintain public health and safety.”
Thanks to recent months that saw plenty of rainfall, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is currently holding 1.9 million acre feet of water content – and that’s after the month of April produced nearly a 100 percent increase in acre feet of runoff from April of last year. The snow is expected to continue melting at high volumes, making the 2016-2017 water year the highest runoff year on record. The main months that see snow melt are April, May, June and July, according to Turlock Irrigation District utility analyst Jason Carkeet, but right now – the end of May – to around mid-June is when peak snow melt numbers occur.
Modesto residents will be able to water their lawns three times a week for the first time in two years. The City Council on Tuesday night approved increasing outdoor watering from two days to three days a week from June through October. Modesto has limited outdoor watering to once or twice a week depending on the time of year since May 2015. The city is easing up after winter storms drenched the valley and covered the Sierra Nevada in snow. Modesto gets its drinking water from wells and Tuolumne River water treated by the Modesto Irrigation District.
For a brief moment, the California Water Service Company and the City of Bakersfield were at odds. Cal Water announced Tuesday that it is lifting restrictions that limit customers to three days of outdoor watering per week. But don’t get excited yet, Bakersfield. The fine print says Cal Water will follow local ordinances, and the current City of Bakersfield municipal code prohibits watering more than three days a week. So until the City Council reviews its water ordinance, which it is expected to do later this year, Cal Water customers will not have the freedom to water every day without penalty.
Water and sewer rates for Padre Dam Municipal Water District customers are about to go up.
The board of directors of the Santee-based district is holding a public hearing June 21 to vote on proposed increases and adjustments to water and sewer rates, and service charges.
The rate hikes, if approved, would take effect in November. The average residential Padre Dam customer would pay $154.75 a month for water and sewer services, up from $151.
Homeowners who let their grass go brown to save money during the drought may have to turn the sprinklers back on, or else their HOA can fine them. In April, Gov. Jerry Brown declared the drought over for most parts of California, lifting restrictions that kept homeowners associations from disciplining residents who stopped watering their grass to help save money and water. However, those days are over, and HOAs are starting to require families to make all their grass green again.
In recognition of National Dam Safety Awareness Day on May 31, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) urges those living or working below dams to recognize the signs of a potential dam breach and to have or update an evacuation plan. PG&E’s 97 storage reservoirs are used primarily for generating hydropower and are generally far smaller than state and federal multi-year water storage reservoirs like Lake Oroville and Shasta Lake. In February, damage to the Oroville Dam spillway led to evacuations in Butte, Yuba and Sutter counties.
For the first time since the reconstruction process began on the Oroville Dam spillway, workers could be seen on the damaged spillway. Construction of the new spillway is approximately one week ahead of schedule, according to Jagdeep Sidhu, an engineer with the Department of Water Resources Program Control Section. The first area of work on the spillway itself is focusing on the lower chute where the water flows into the Feather river.
A new irrigation enhancement project has seen positive results for farmers in the San Joaquin Valley. The project, which took three years to be designed and funded, and only months to be built, cuts down on water usage from the South San Joaquin Valley Irrigation District that backs up in the Stanislaus River. “This grew out of an idea I had,” said Sam Bologna, Engineering Department manager of the South San Joaquin Valley Irrigation District and developer of the project, who was recently in Monterey attending an Association of California Water Agencies conference. “We needed to find a way to serve farmers and also conserve water.”
Memorial Day weekend is usually the start of summer for most of the country. For Lake Tahoe, it’s really the end of winter. This coming weekend won’t be any different. While the forecast is for sunny skies and highs in the mid- to high 60s, the remnants of winter will likely be felt by people who are near any body of water and on hiking-biking trails. The National Weather Service in Reno has issued a flood watch that is in effect through 11pm May 24 for South Lake Tahoe, Truckee, Bridgeport, Mammoth Lakes, Stateline, Incline Village, Carson City, Reno and Gardnerville.
