Reservoirs California

For all the misery they caused, the torrential rains that fell this month have also guaranteed that California homes and businesses will have plenty of water to get through this year and probably 1996 as well, officials said Thursday. With most of the state's 155 major reservoirs nearing capacity, the State Water Project is guaranteeing that it will deliver 100% of the water sought by local agencies, including the giant Metropolitan Water District that serves most of Southern California.

California's reservoirs are brimming with a bountiful late snowmelt that has left the state's water storage system in its best shape in nearly a decade. With some of the upper reaches of the Sierra still buried under as much as 6 to 9 feet of snow at the end of May, spring runoff has approached twice the norm. The unusually wet spring and heavy snowpack put Central and Northern California on flood watch for weeks, straining its rivers and the levees that guard them.

California's reservoirs are brimming with a bountiful late snowmelt that has left the state's water storage system in its best shape in nearly a decade. With some of the upper reaches of the Sierra still buried under as much as 6 to 9 feet of snow at the end of May, spring runoff has approached twice the norm. The unusually wet spring and heavy snowpack put Central and Northern California on flood watch for weeks, straining its rivers and the levees that guard them.

For all the misery they caused, the torrential rains that fell this month have also guaranteed that California homes and businesses will have plenty of water to get through this year and probably 1996 as well, officials said Thursday. With most of the state's 155 major reservoirs nearing capacity, the State Water Project is guaranteeing that it will deliver 100% of the water sought by local agencies, including the giant Metropolitan Water District that serves most of Southern California.

I must say that I am pleased to see that California residents have reduced their water consumption by 20% without mandatory rationing, but that doesn't seem to be enough. Yet, these long-term proposals such as desalination plants and reservoirs constructed that supposedly trap rainwater are not only ludicrous but illogical as well. If Southern California Metropolitan Water District (MWD) officials would take a look up north, they could see where all of our fresh water is going. Agriculture is consuming 85% of our freshwater supply.

If you plow and plant the land, the water will come. That was the belief, encouraged by unscrupulous advertisers, of a lot of would-be Great Plains farmers in the 19th century. They went broke in a hurry, their fields swallowed by dust, yet the lesson remains unlearned today. California manufacturers and developers claim it is anti-business to require that water supplies be assured before new housing developments are approved.

Christmas Bird-Count Results--Some preliminary results of the Christmas Bird Counts, led locally by the Sea & Sage chapter of the National Audubon Society, are in. More than 150 bird species were spotted during the Inland Count, held Dec. 16. Some of the more abundant species in the area include the following: * Ruddy duck--1,849 spotted. The ducks were most common in the Mission Viejo and El Toro areas. * Mourning dove--1,025 spotted.

The state's recreational boating industry is irate about a legislative proposal to ban the use of high-polluting outboard motors on more than 100 lakes and reservoirs throughout California. The impact of the ban, the industry says, would cost it $800 million annually in sales. The proposal, contained in Assembly Bill 2439, prohibits the use of high-polluting, two-stroke engines on lakes and reservoirs that supply drinking water.

One swallow does not make a summer. Nor does one dry month or two in the California winter presage a drought. But even if snowfall in the mountains reaches normal levels during the next six weeks, 1987 will be officially known as a critically dry year. This could lead to cutbacks of normal irrigation-water deliveries to farm customers of the state Water Project. Many farmers then would pump more water from their Central Valley aquifers, which already are overdrafted.

Health authorities have found the West Nile virus in mosquitoes near the Salton Sea, the first evidence that the disease is developing reservoirs in California. In addition, preliminary tests, also in Imperial County, showed that several flocks of chickens whose blood is regularly tested for disease are likely to have the virus as well. The discoveries suggest that human cases of the disease may soon follow, as has happened in other states.

Unless a greater effort is made to better manage the state's water resources, most Californians by 2020 will cope with water shortages not just in drought years but in normal rainfall years as well, a new state report predicted Wednesday. The shortages will be more frequent and severe as population growth and environmental protective measures increase the demands on existing supplies, according to the long-range assessment.

California's coast--including sensitive estuaries and marine sanctuaries--could be virtually defenseless against a major offshore oil spill, even if the accident were far smaller than last March's Alaska oil disaster, according to new analyses by federal, state and local authorities. A Valdez-size spill west of Point Conception would overwhelm the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, according to a computer simulation by the State Lands Commission to be made public today.