Calif. flushed 95% of incoming Delta water to Pacific Ocean during Monday's massive storm. Jan 27 2023 10:53PM more by lamar
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Calif. flushed 95% of incoming Delta water to Pacific Ocean during Monday's massive storm
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is filled to the brim, but Valley farmers and southern California won't get access to much of it. Here's why. After several years of severe drought, the intense storms over the last week would seemingly be a godsend to California and go a long way toward fixing the state's water problems.
But the opposite is happening as the state is flushing out the vast majority of the incoming water into the ocean.
The big picture: Monday's unrelenting rainfall resulted in 101,433 cubic feet per second of water inflow into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, according to data provided by the Bureau of Reclamation. The rainy first week of the year averaged around 85,000 cubic feet per second of water inflow.
The latest available data recorded Tuesday's inflow total 117,603 cubic feet per second.
Yet on Monday, 95,980 cubic feet per second of water was flushed out of the delta into the Pacific Ocean, leaving a net of five percent of the incoming water to remain in the delta to be pumped and exported throughout the state.
Lamar that is true. But, what really need is snowpack and thankfully we got it.
“There is at least one silver lining to the punishing storms that have been sweeping across the Pacific Ocean and battering California recently: The snow they have dumped in the Sierra Nevada will do wonders for the state’s beleaguered reservoirs.
As of Tuesday, California’s mountain snowpack held more than twice the water content that would be there at this time in an average year, and was close to matching the April 1 average with more than two months still to go, according to the state’s Department of Water Resources.
That matters because as the Sierra Nevada snowpack melts in the warmer months, it typically provides about 30 percent of the water supply for a state that has been reeling for years from punishing droughts and the major wildfires they help to fuel.
With the snowpack the way it is right now — roughly around 200 percent for most areas of the Sierra Nevada — that’s a great thing for California,” Chris Hintz, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Sacramento, said by phone early Wednesday.”
If you all might remember, the voters in CA approved the Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2014. Proposition 1 which authorized $7.12 billion in general obligation bonds for state water supply infrastructure projects.
Where the hell did this money go? Was it spent on something else? Or have the regulations, environmentalist and other tree-huggers prevented any additional storage to occur?
This state authorizes and spends so much money that just never gets to the needs of the people.
Hopefully this comes off as non-partisan as possible, but this is misleading because it's measuring flow rate and not actual volume. Secondly there is basically no world where it's feasible to capture anywhere close to all the rainwater on the scale that fell during the big rainstorm. Thirdly the rain still replenished groundwater supplies which is important for people on well water and for the environment in general.
We obviously need to do a better job capturing rain water but we're never going to get even close to 100%, nor should we.
There was a newspaper article about the bond issue and why nothing has been done. Typical answer...we are working on plans but it takes a long time for all the environmental reviews.
I call BS and nobody really cares about results; they (government employees, consultants, lobbyists) just want to get paid for doing nothing.
Unfortunately, far too many people including those who keep voting, don't pay attention to anything and won't hold all of the assholes in Sacramento accountable for the shit that happens in this state.
If we didn't have such great weather and lots of tech jobs, this place would be a third rate state because no one who makes any money would live here.
If we didn't have such great weather and lots of tech jobs, this place would be a third rate state because no one who makes any money would live here.
Ain't that the truth. It continues to amaze me that people in this state continue to vote for the same idiots year after year. We have the highest or nearly the highest taxes, terrible schools, terrible roads, etc, etc and the state is run by one party in pretty much a super-majority. Yet every election cycle the same morons get re-elected and they keep doing the same stupid shit knowing the uninformed voters in this state will keep voting for them.
Yes, I know, just leave. Well, for one the weather is a great draw. Two, I have another year or so that I have to stay for work reasons but then we will be gone. And now I see that the idiots running this state (dems) are trying to figure out a way for those that leave to have to continue paying taxes to CA. I am sure it never crossed their simple minds to ask themselves why so may high wage earners are leaving...
I think there needs to be an audit of "who" is voting for the nonsense legislation that is passed in this state.
Knowing the voter rolls are 20 years old without update, large numbers of people are leaving, and this great state does sends out mandatory mail ballots, you have to wonder why vote counting goes on for weeks and so many races are "too close to call" for a sustained time until total bullshit happens.
I recently saw where over 10 million California 2022 midterm ballots are unaccounted for after the election.
That means the state blindly sends out way too many ballots and god only knows what happens to the ones sent to dead people and non residents.
This shit needs to be cleaned up .
BTW,.. It amazes the hell out of me how a vile peice of Progressive trash like Katie Porter got reelected to Congress in South Orange County.
We are headed into an "Ineptocracy"
A government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves are rewarded with the goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminished number of producers.
While we all know what you mean, the hyperbole of your premise makes it sound like we could have captured water but we instead actively did something to get rid of it: flushed it away.
We did capture a lot. Much of it replenishing our groundwater aquifers. Traditionally, we've relied heavily on snow-melt and this year we received a lot of snow. That's not as reliable though because early heatwaves melt it too soon, too quickly, and that's becoming the norm now. Maybe we'll get lucky this year, but we can't count on that.
There are efforts to capture more rainwater. The state and localities recognize the need, but in the past we've done more to protect against flooding - so channelize the rivers, etc.. After all people's property values are the #1 importance to most people. Water isn't only top of mind when we don't have it or we have too much like during the storms.
Localities are more on the ball than the state. Los Angeles county has done a lot. The Tujunga reservoir's capacity was doubled recently via the county's efforts. The San Gabriel Mountain reservoir systems are being improved. But there aren't that many great spots to do all that in and what we've done so far is a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed. We'll need more wetlands type parks. In fact we'll need to stop letting developers build on wetlands.
This is going to take a long time, and be very piecemeal. But I don't think anyone thinks we should just continue things based on the knowledge we had in the 1920s when most of our water systems were built.
I did a little more research on rainwater capture for LA and it looks like in 2018 they approved a tax to help it but the projects are in bureaucratic hell and the expected completion date is like 10 years from now. Which sucks, but I mean, I don't think it was realistic to go from money to finished project for something of this scope in less than 5 years either.
