Reservoirs

Update: Actor Tom Bresnahan and his wife, Elizabeth French, have sold their Paul Williams-designed home in Silver Lake for $2.1 million. The Monterey Colonial, named the Rene Faron residence for its first owner, sits on a knoll with views of the reservoir, city and mountains. The restored house, built in 1935, has formal living and dining rooms, a library, a wine cellar, an eat-in kitchen, four bedrooms and 31/2 bathrooms in more than 3,200 square feet of living space.

On a southern-facing slope of the San Gabriel Mountains, Glen Owens strode through the dappled sunlight of century-old oaks and sycamores that the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works wants to replace with muck dredged from a nearby reservoir. Eyeing the trees marked for removal with strips of black and white ribbons nailed to their trunks, Owens shook his head in dismay. "I've got the same feeling I get when I see cattle on their way to slaughter," he said. "Don't get me wrong ?

Late spring storms smothered the Sierra in snow. The state's biggest reservoir is nearly full. Precipitation across much of California has been above average. By standard measures, California's three-year drought is over. "From a hydrologic standpoint, for most of California, it is gone," said state hydrologist Maury Roos, who has monitored the ups and downs of the state's water for 50 years. But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't lifting his drought declaration. Los Angeles isn't ending its watering restrictions and Southern California's major water wholesaler isn't reversing delivery cuts.

As hundreds of "tea partyers" filtered into a gymnasium in El Dorado Hills last week for rare back-to-back appearances by Republican Senate candidates Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore, Barbara Brown sat alone on the wooden bleachers studying a flier contrasting the candidates. Brown, a member of the Motherlode Tea Party of Amador County, said she had been leaning toward DeVore, but was looking for someone "who can go for the jugular" against Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). She liked Fiorina's "fight" in interview snippets she'd seen.

When Chew-Een Lee was growing up in western Sacramento during World War II, he was eager to enlist in the military to fight for his country. He joined the ROTC in high school and enlisted in the Marine Corps as soon as he graduated. "I wanted to dispel the notion about the Chinese being meek and obsequious," said Lee, whose father was a farmer and prominent figure in the Chinese community in Northern California. But to Lee's disappointment, he was given a job in a language school rather than a combat billet.

Harvey Bailey was 11 when Friant Dam started spitting the San Joaquin River into an irrigation canal the size of a freeway. His father and other growers laid bets on when the river's cool waters would reach their little farm town on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, promising an end to the region's irrigation woes. Life magazine published a big photo spread on the canal's opening. "It was a huge event," recalled Bailey, 72, president of the Orange Cove Irrigation District.

It may be raining and snowing, but water managers are still forecasting below-normal deliveries this year for the state system that helps supply Southern California. Storms have been filling Northern California's big federal reservoir, Shasta Lake, but have been steering clear of the region that drains into Lake Oroville, the main reservoir in the state system. "Every rainstorm seems to sit over Shasta and bypass our reservoir," said Jerry Johns, deputy director of the state Department of Water Resources.

It's too early to know if California's three-year drought is ending, but the train of storms that plowed into California last week pushed the critical mountain snowpack to slightly above normal levels and sent water rushing into half-empty reservoirs. At his office at Shasta Dam north of Redding, Brian Person watched the biggest reservoir in the state rise 4 to 5 feet a day on Wednesday and Thursday. "Particularly following the abysmal hydrology of '07, '08 and '09, this is a fantastic experience," said Person, an area manager with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

The rash of water main breaks that flooded streets, homes and businesses and snarled traffic throughout Los Angeles over the last few months may have been triggered by minor increases in pressure because of an unusually full reservoir and fluctuations after a trunk line ruptured in Studio City in September. In a report prepared for the City Council and made public Tuesday, Department of Water and Power officials wrote that they still don't know conclusively what caused the rash of breaks.

What's that smell? That's what the people of Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita wondered as a rotten egg odor started wafting in thick pockets last week into their yards, garages and living rooms. Some in the south Orange County suburbs called Public Works to report a sewer backup. But that wasn't the problem. Others called the Fire Department, suspecting a gas leak. False alarm. They were baffled. What was making the evening air hang heavy with that overwhelming stench?