[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 5/1/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment

 

May 1,  2008

 

1.  Top Item -

 

 

Roseville raises drought alert: More districts to follow as spring comes up dry

Sacramento Bee – 5/1/08

By Chris Bowman – staff writer

 

Roseville became the first city in more than a dozen years Wednesday to activate a drought alert in the river-laced Sacramento region.

It probably won't be the last.

 

Managers of water utilities serving more than 225,000 northeastern Sacramento County residents said they, too, will broadcast similar calls for voluntary conservation later this month, thanks to two back-to-back years of stingy rain and snow.

January's respectable Sierra snowpack is melting remarkably early and quickly this spring, which is projected to be the driest on record, according to the state Department of Water Resources.

 

"We had a fairly good January and February, and it looked like we were going to have a pretty good water year, but then the rains stopped," said Derrick Whitehead, water supply manager for Roseville, population 107,000.

 

As a result, federal operators of Folsom Lake aren't loosening water allocations to Roseville and other downstream cities as they usually do this time of year.

Storage in Folsom stands at 76 percent of the 15-year average, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation monitors show.

 

While the depth of the snowpack feeding the American River reservoir is almost exactly average, the runoff is abnormally low. The topsoil, extremely dry from a rain-short 2007, is absorbing much of the snowmelt that otherwise would replenish the American River, bureau officials said.

 

Roseville is counting on Placer County Water Agency reservoirs upstream of Folsom Lake to make up for most of federal shortfall, and relying on conscientious residents and businesses to erase the remaining deficit.

 

The city adopted a five-stage drought alert system in early February after federal officials announced that municipal supplies from Folsom and other Central Valley Project reservoirs would be 75 percent of contracted levels.

 

The all-voluntary "stage one" alert, scheduled to be mailed to Roseville property owners in the next two weeks, calls for greater vigilance, including:

• Cutting water use by 10 percent.

• Curbing over-irrigation of lawns.

• Using brooms in place of hoses to clean pavement.

• Asking restaurants to serve water only upon request – an action that saves little water but helps deliver the conservation message, officials said.

 

The city is providing water-use audits and water-efficient hose nozzles and shower heads free of charge.

"A 10 percent reduction for each household is really easy to accomplish," said Lisa Amaral, Roseville's conservation manager. "It doesn't really require a lot of effort and doesn't impact your overall quality of life."

 

Roseville has not called for water conservation since 1994, when the Sacramento region was still recovering from the 1991 drought, Whitehead said.

The water supply outlook for other local cities varies according to water rights and dependence on federal water supplies.

 

Sacramento, for example, is well endowed with legal rights to river water that more than meets its demands.

 

San Juan Water District – serving 120,000 residents in parts of Carmichael, Citrus Heights, Fair Oaks, Granite Bay and Orangevale – relies on Folsom Lake for about 20 percent of its needs.

 

As with Roseville, San Juan will rely on Placer County Water Agency contracts to get by this summer and fall, said Shauna Lorence, the district's general manager.

Lorence said she would rather tap citizen awareness than activate the district's emergency well water supplies.

 

"Shutting off the hose and paying attention to irrigation will make a big difference," Lorence said.

 

El Dorado Irrigation District officials said their Gold Rush-era rights to American River water will more than offset the dip in federal supplies to El Dorado Hills.

Officials with water districts serving Folsom and Rancho Cordova said they, too, have other sources to cover the federal shortfall.

 

Those districts, however, have decided to ask customers to join their water-short neighbors in the conservation effort, said Paul Schubert, district manager for Golden State Water Co., which serves Rancho Cordova and Gold River.

 

"We will be following suit, not so much because we are affected, but to get a regional message out there so people aren't confused about the need to conserve," Schubert said.#

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/903888.html