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The emergency that unfolded recently at Oroville Dam in Northern California poses no immediate or projected impact to water supplies in San Diego County. Voice of San Diego’s story on the crisis, though, states that “we could lose a significant chunk of our water supply, perhaps even 20-25 percent.” Low winter water demand, significant water reserves in Southern California and local investments in water supply reliability will allow the San Diego County Water Authority to provide uninterrupted water service here even if deliveries from Oroville are impacted.

 

The State of California is not living up to its responsibility to protect the health and well-being of the residents of the Coachella and Imperial valleys. Due to a water transfer referred to as the Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA), significant inflows of water currently flowing into the Salton Sea will be diverted, beginning January 2018, to urban water districts. As a result, the Salton Sea will shrink rapidly, revealing vast acres of dried beaches (termed playas) that are the source of toxic dust.

The Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS), the world’s largest advanced water purification facility of its kind, has been online since January 2008. The project is a joint partnership between the Orange County Water District (OCWD; the District) and the Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD). On January 22-23, 2017, OCSD saw influent flows that had not been seen since 1995. OCSD experienced peak flows of up to 586 million gallons per day (mgd) coming into both of their wastewater treatment plants.

The effort to protect Oroville Dam entered a critical phase Monday when engineers shut off water flowing out of the damaged main spillway, giving officials their first unobstructed view of the eroded concrete chute since a crisis prompted mass evacuations earlier this month. For the next five to seven days, geologists and engineers will have an unhindered view of the concrete spillway, which on Monday was revealed to have severely deteriorated on its lower half during the last two weeks of use.

More than 80 percent of California is no longer in drought after a series of winter storms, including last week’s hourslong soaker in Southern California. About 17 percent of the state remains in drought, according to this week’s U.S. Drought Monitor report, the first since last Friday’s powerful storm. That’s a dramatic turnaround from one year ago when 94 percent of the state was in drought during an historic five-year dry spell.