[Water_news] 2. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: SUPPLY - 6/4/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment 

 

June 4, 2008

 

2. Supply –

 

 

 

Dry spring raises talk of water restrictions: S.J., S.F. BREAK RECORDS FOR LOWEST SPRING RAINFALL

San Jose Mercury News – 6/4/08

By Ken McLaughlin and Julie Sevrens Lyons

The year 2008 will go down as the driest spring on record in San Jose and San Francisco, setting up the possibility that Silicon Valley could see mandatory water restrictions by next year.

 

Just how far do you have to go back to find a drier spring? Way more than a century.

 

San Jose began keeping records in 1874, San Francisco in 1849, the year of the Gold Rush.

 

Although summer doesn't officially start until June 20, climatologists traditionally dub the months of March, April and May "spring," said Jan Null, an adjunct professor of meteorology at San Francisco State University.

 

Null said San Jose's rainfall is now running at 75 percent of normal; San Francisco's is 79 percent of normal.

 

"Those are not terrible numbers," Null said.

 

To Bay Area water officials, however, the dry spring hurts.

 

That's because the rainy season started out so promising after a dismally dry winter the year before. Northern California was hit with a huge storm on Jan. 4, followed by about eight refreshingly wet weeks.

 

But in the past three months, San Jose got only 0.18 inches of rain, breaking the old spring record of 0.39 inches set in 1875. San Francisco ended May with 0.47 inches of rain, smashing a 1959 record of 0.68 inches.

 

Tuesday's news followed an announcement in early May that March and April were the driest months in the Sierra since state officials first started keeping records in 1922.

 

Despite heavy snows in January and February that made skiers ecstatic, the snowpack averaged 67 percent of normal for May 1 in the state's final snowpack measurement of the year.

 

When snow in the Sierra melts during the summer, it flows into rivers and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

 

The Santa Clara Valley depends on the snowpack for about half its water and groundwater for the other half.

 

From January to February, the reservoirs went from 46 percent full to 70 percent full, said Susan Siravo, spokeswoman for the Santa Clara Valley Water District. They're now 65 percent full.

 

One other unknown is the delta, where a lawsuit over an endangered fish - the delta smelt - is expected to result in a 30 percent reduction in pumping.

 

The district is asking for a 10 percent voluntary cutback - a request first made last summer. "But we're definitely in the mode where we're planning for a worst-case scenario if 2009 is also a dry year," she said. "That would make it three years in which we've had to draw from our reserves."

 

That, she said, could mean mandatory restrictions next year. "But," she said, "we'd like to educate people now on what they can do to conserve to avoid mandatory conservation."

 

The easiest fix for homeowners is to replace those old 3.5-gallon-a-flush toilets with one of the new "high-efficiency toilets," which range from 1.3 to 1.6 gallons per flush, she said.

 

She said Silicon Valley still has a half-million older toilets that are needlessly using up water. The district will help you with a $125 rebate check for every toilet you replace, she said.

 

Homeowners, Siravo said, should also start thinking about ripping out water-sucking plants and replacing them with drought-resistant varieties.

 

This year featured a moderate La Niña - a weather system typically associated with minimal rain in the Southwest and above-average precipitation in the Pacific Northwest.

 

For the Bay Area, La Niña can be a mixed bag but has more often than not meant below-average rainfall totals.

 

La Niña could have been the reason for the diminishing returns as the season wore on, said Brian Tentinger, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Monterey.

 

But then again, he said, "sometimes it's just dry."#

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_9474397?nclick_check=1