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Drought: Mandatory Water Restrictions Approved for 2 Million Residents of Santa Clara County

/in , , /by /Mercury Newsby Paul Rogers

Santa Clara County on Wednesday became the most populous county in California to impose mandatory water restrictions, saying that the worsening drought poses a significant threat to the local groundwater supplies that provide nearly half the drinking water for 2 million residents.

On a 7-0 vote, the Santa Clara Valley Water District board declared a water shortage emergency and set a target of reducing water use 33% countywide from 2013 levels, a year the state uses as baseline. The district, a government agency based in San Jose which serves as the county’s wholesale water provider, also urged cities and private water companies who buy its water to put in place water wasting rules and other mandates, including limiting lawn watering to no more than three days a week. As in the last drought, the rules are likely to include monthly water allocations for each home beyond which financial penalties would apply.

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Drought: Big Bay Area Water Agencies Ask – But Don’t Yet Require – Public to Conserve More Water

/in , , /by /The Mercury Newsby Paul Rogers

After back-to-back dry winters, two of the Bay Area’s biggest water agencies on Tuesday moved forward with plans to urge the public to reduce water use to avoid shortages this year. But for now, they are using a carrot rather than a stick, saying they have enough water to get by without resorting to fines, water cops and strict rules.

The Santa Clara Valley Water District, based in San Jose, voted Tuesday night to double the amount of money it pays homeowners to replace their lawns with drought-tolerant landscaping, from $1 a square foot to $2, and to expand the maximum amount it will pay per household from $2,000 to $3,000 under the conservation program.

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San Francisco Bay: Protection from Costly Disasters is Being Thrown Away, Scientists Say

/in , /by /The Mercury Newsby Paul Rogers

For more than 100 years after California’s Gold Rush, developers and city leaders filled in San Francisco Bay, shrinking it by one third to build farms, freeways, airports and subdivisions.

All that changed in the 1970s with modern environmental laws. But now as sea level rise threatens to cause billions of dollars of flooding in the coming decades, the bay is going to need to be filled again — but this time in a different way, according to a new scientific report out Tuesday.

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Drought: Santa Clara Valley Water District Asks Public to Step Up Water Conservation

/in , , /by /The Mercury News by Paul Rogers

In the latest sign that California is entering a new drought, Silicon Valley’s largest water provider on Tuesday asked the public to step up water conservation efforts.

“We have no idea how long it will last or how bad it might get,” said Tony Estremera, chairman of the board of the Santa Clara Valley Water District. “Clearly we can’t just sit back and wait for more rain.”

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Work On Valley Water’s Largest Reservoir Moves Forward

/in , , /by /The Silicon Valley Voiceby Jacob Bourne

The Santa Clara Valley Water District has been lowering the water level on the Anderson Dam since Oct. 1 to keep the region safe from potentially catastrophic flooding in the event of a major earthquake.

The Anderson Reservoir can hold up to 90,000 acre-feet of water and is now at three percent capacity, which is the lowest feasible level given the position of the existing outlet tunnel. At its current level, even a heavy rainy season would not pose dam failure and flooding risk; keeping some water in the reservoir helps preserve some wildlife habitat. Beyond immediate safety, one of the main reasons for lowering the water level is to allow for construction to begin on a major seismic retrofit project for the dam. The reservoir has been closed for recreational use since October and is expected to remain shuttered for the duration of the project.

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Anderson Dam: Project to Drain Santa Clara County’s Largest Reservoir Begins Thursday

/in , , /by /The Mercury Newsby Paul Rogers

Santa Clara County’s largest reservoir will soon be nearly empty, and will stay that way for the next 10 years. Under orders from federal dam regulators, the Santa Clara Valley Water District will begin a project to drain Anderson Reservoir on Thursday, the first step in a $576 million effort to tear down and rebuild its aging dam.

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Santa Clara Valley Water District asks voters for $682 million parcel tax for floods, dams, environmental projects

/in , /by /The Mercury News (Bay Area)by Paul Rogers

After years marked by a historic statewide drought and devastating floods around downtown San Jose, Santa Clara County’s largest water provider has decided to ask voters to approve a parcel tax to pay for a wide variety of projects, from flood control to creek restoration, along with some costs of rebuilding the county’s largest dam at Anderson Reservoir.

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Anderson Dam: Plans Released to Drain Santa Clara County’s Largest Reservoir

/in , , /by /Mercury Newsby Paul Rogers

Three months after federal dam safety regulators ordered Anderson Reservoir, the largest reservoir in Santa Clara County, to be drained due to earthquake concerns, new details are emerging on what will happen to all that water, the fish that depend on it, and the water supply for Silicon Valley.

The Santa Clara Valley Water District, which owns the 7-mile-long reservoir located east of Highway 101 between Morgan Hill and San Jose, has drawn up plans to begin emptying it starting Oct. 1.

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Coronavirus: Water District Employee Tests Positive, Some Leaders Self-Quarantine

/in , , /by /San Jose Mercury Newsby Paul Rogers

An employee at Silicon Valley’s largest water district has tested positive for coronavirus, and at least eight other employees, including CEO Norma Camacho, entered self-quarantine because of it.

The employee at the Santa Clara Valley Water District — a public agency that provides drinking water and flood protection to 2 million residents from Stanford University to San Jose to Gilroy — works in the communications department.

The employee, who began showing symptoms on March 1 and left work March 2, remains hospitalized. The employee is not involved with the treatment or delivery of drinking water, and that service continues uninterrupted, officials at the district, also known as Valley Water, said Monday.

“As Valley Water continues to monitor the outbreak of COVID-19, we want to reassure our community that this virus is not impacting the safety of your drinking water, or our ability to supply water in Santa Clara County, ” CEO Norma Camacho said in a statement.

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Earthquake Risk Prompts Order to Drain California Dam

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribune

Worried that an earthquake could collapse a big dam south of San Francisco, officials have ordered its reservoir to be completely drained by October to reduce the risk of floodwaters spilling into Silicon Valley.

The 240-foot (73-meter) high earthen Anderson Dam, built in 1950 between San Jose and the community of Morgan Hill, poses too great a risk of collapse and must be fully drained by Oct. 1, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates dams, the Mercury News reported.

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