California drought

While So. Cal. has not been to badly bashed in this thread, all of CAL seems to be accused of using too much water. I just sent my Bro in No. Cal. several articles regarding water usage in Cal so I can't quote them but it is well know that No. Cal. including our state capital uses three times the water per capita as So Cal. We sort of discount the water used by the central valley as it feeds most of the USA.

We in Los Angeles were told to reduce our water consumption by 20% about four years ago. It was voluntary but our Mayor and City Council raised our rates dramatically, if you used more than 80% of the preceding year. We were gone for ten weeks in the fall and our bill was higher than it had ever been during one single month. It turned out there was a defective sprinkler valve on our hillside and the water ran for a couple of days. Our water bill went up over a hundred dollars more than the preceding month.

Yes Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is inside Yosemite Park and it is owned by the City of San Francisco. Water goes from Hetch Hetchy all the way to San Francisco in a pipeline, versus a canal. Because of this San Francisco has some of the best drinking water in the State.

But funny thing about Hetch Hetchy. The Hetch Hetchy valley (that is now under water) is said by some to have been as spectacular as Yosemite Valley. Lots of people did not want the dam built. There has been a movement in recent years to drain the lake and remove the dam and restore the valley. It is estimated that it would cost the City of San Francisco and the other users of this water, about a billion dollars to restore the valley and to locate and construct another source for their water. Without getting into too much detail, we all know the politics of San Francisco and a lot of the residents there are the main protestors against building any other reservoirs in California. Yet when it comes to restoring this valley and them having to pay for it, well they are all against that. There was a recent measure on the ballot in San Francisco regarding draining Hetch Hetchy. I think it was just some type of an advisory measure and it may have provided funds to study the issue. That ballot measure was overwhelming defeated by the voters of San Francisco.

Now I'm far from an enviro whacko and I want to see more dams built in California, but I also believe Hetch Hetchy Reservoir never should have been built and now it should be drained. There are many other places dams could be built that would not destroy that type of landscape.

Extreme weather guru Joe Bastardi covered that today and said the pattern is a repeat from several previous draughts. It may last for years. Primary (but not only) cause is both Atlantic and Pacific water temperatures.

Hetch Hetchy - isn't that the main reservoir for San Francisco? It's the next valley north of Yosemite. In fact it is in the park. Think how much water could be stored if they dammed Yosemite as well. This past summer a major forest fire burned to the shores of HH. Fire along hwy 120 last summer

It's the Central Valley Project (Federal) that takes water from Shasta Lake and Trinity Lake and provides irrigation water to the San Joaquin Valley. The California State Water Project taps the Feather River, and feeds the cities (SF and LA) as well as some agriculture. And the grandfather of these NS projects the LA's Owens Valley on the east side of the Sierras.

Hetch Hetchy water all goes to San Francisco and surrounding cities, not South. The water in the California Aqueduct system does go into Southern California. Now in defense of Southern Cal (which I don't like to do) it is a lot of their tax dollars too that created the giants system of reservoirs and canals. We wouldn't be able to capture all that water without this system.

It should also be noted that northern California exports a LOT of water south. (Hetch Hetchi). The water situation has fueled a debate about two Californias for decades. The current drought will refuel that discussion. Sixty years ago they had the foresight to build the California Aquiduct System. Today, environmentalists would fight it every inch of the way. Poor field mice can't cross the cement canal.

Not to get too much into politics here, but California has lots of people and lots of demand for water, yet very little water storage capability has been added over the last few decades. Every time a new reservoir is proposed groups of people oppose and it gets shut down. We know we have droughts and we know that every single year, even in the good years, there is a six month period where we get almost no rain. If during those good year winters we had the ability to store more water, then in these bad drought years we wouldn't have the problems we do.

And just for info, this won't be just a California problem. California's agriculture industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and supplies food all over the Country and the world. Agriculture also uses 80% of the water. If that water isn't there then all us are going to be paying some high prices at the grocery store in the coming months.

Glad you got a good rainfall in the mountains Jeff here at the coast just over .10 inches for the weekend storms. :(

Update: 11PM, Sunday, Feb. 8th, 2014.
It has rained constantly here on the west slope at 4K ft. for 4 days solid. The culprit is a river of rain called the "Pineapple Express".
I just stood at our weather station readout and watched the storm total of precip turn over to 10.00 inches of liquid. We have very porous soil and there was very little runoff. The local water storage lakes and reservoirs have reported amazing water heights.
If you read a page ago, I told a story of some drought years preceding a big amount of rainfall. This may turn out to be the same scenario. Let's hope.
In the time it took to get this post together we are now at 10.27 inches of rainfall.
At the start it was 3" of snow; then rain, then again 3" of snow, then rain. For days.
amazing.
regards, as always, jefe

At times in the past F&G has actually raised limits so more fish would be taken rather than have them die from the lake or river getting too small or warm. Another issue for a lot water bodies is when they get to shallow or slow the water warms up from normal temps and shocks the fish.
Costs lots of money to clean up dead fish washed up all over the shoreline and because of the volume they can't just leave them.