Recent rains have not made much difference with water situation
Yes, Tehachapi has received rain and snow during recent storms that hammered areas of the state. But no, the drought is not over and there is not yet any indication that the Department of Water Resources will allocate more water from the State Water Project this year.
Tom Neisler, general manager of Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District, shared that grim news with members of the Board of Directors of the district and others gathered for a workshop during a special meeting held Monday afternoon, Jan. 9.
The district set the special meeting to discuss the allocation of imported water from the SWP and related matters, including this year’s water priority ordinance.
Board members sat around tables with stakeholders — including the city of Tehachapi, Golden Hills Community Services District and Grimmway Farms — to review estimations of supply and demand and share perspectives about the best way to divide up imported water when there is not enough to meet demand, as is expected again this year.
The discussion was productive but inconclusive and will be continued at the board’s next regular meeting at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 18.
HOW MUCH RAIN?
The water district measures the rain that falls at its office near Brite Lake. Water is tabulated by both the calendar year and the water year — a period that begins each Oct. 1 and runs through the following Sept. 30.
This year, Tehachapi had no rain in October. The district measured 1.73 inches in November and 2.69 inches in December. As of midnight Sunday, the rainfall in January was 1.17 inches. That measurement was taken before a new storm arrived on Monday afternoon with what seemed to be heavier rain than earlier storms.
The total for October through December 2022 was 4.42 inches, compared to 5.21 inches during the same period in 2021. The average for that three-month period is 3.86 inches (based on rainfall records since 1995).
Whether the so-called atmospheric rivers that dropped snow in the higher mountains and rain elsewhere in the state in recent weeks will continue remains to be seen, Neisler said.
In 2021, a rainy December triggered optimism — but there was little rain in January and February 2022. California’s water officials aren’t convinced that the current storms are going to continue and officially the state is still in drought.
Rain in December and thus far in January added about 36 acrefeet of water to the district’s storage at Brite Lake. An “acre foot” is a term commonly used in water supply planning to describe water volume and is approximately 326,000 gallons — enough water to cover an acre of land about 1-foot deep.
At Lake Oroville in Northern California — where water from the Feather River is collected and stored before it is released to make its way south via the California Aqueduct, the latest storage levels are almost exactly the same as they were at this time last year — Neisler said.
In early December the DWP announced its initial allocation of SWP water this year — only 5 percent of what is called the Table A allocation. In 2022, the initial allocation was a shocking zero percent allocation. But with optimism from the rains of December 2021, the SWP increased that allocation to 15 percent in March 2022 — and then reduced it to only 5 percent in March.
This year, Neisler said, the DWP is holding off on a revised allocation to wait for the situation to stabilize.
“They don’t want to make the same mistake as last year,” he said.
Imported water is used within the district to supplement native groundwater. A reduction in the SWP allocation doesn’t have an immediate impact on individuals who get their water from the city or one of the community services districts that provide water. But it has an immediate impact on agriculture and may mean that the district’s M&I (municipal and industrial) customers will not be able to purchase as much water to bank for future years.
If the SWP allocation remains at 5 percent this year, the district will not be able to provide all customers with the imported water they would like to buy.
THE DROUGHT
The good news about California’s ongoing drought is that as of Jan. 5, no areas of the state were rated as being in “exceptional drought” by the U.S. Drought Monitor.
The Drought Monitor is a joint project of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Drought Monitor’s rankings include abnormally dry, moderate drought, severe drought, extreme drought and exceptional drought.
Nearly all of Kern County and the Central Valley of California remained in extreme drought as of Jan. 3.