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Dry March means state water contractor’s allocations stay at 35%

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 12, 2008 at 6:47 am

From the Antelope Valley Press:

Unless May brings some “miracle” rainstorms, State Water Contractors will not get one more drop of water from the California Aqueduct than the 35% already allocated this year by the Department of Water Resources, a top local water official says.

There’s “little chance” for a change in this year’s allocation despite all the rain in January and February, because March was such a dry month, Antelope Valley-East Kern Water Agency General Manager Russ Fuller told the agency board Tuesday night.

His assessment of state water woes reinforced comments in a news release issued by State Water Contractors Inc., a nonprofit association of 27 public agencies throughout the state that provide water from the State Water Project to more than 25 million residents and 750,000 acres of agricultural land.

“Urban water users and farmers are already feeling the pinch from restrictions imposed by an unprecedented federal court ruling that has slashed California’s water supply by 600,000 acre-feet of water in the first quarter of 2008,” the news release from State Water Contractors’ Sacramento headquarters said. An acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons, the amount used by the average single-family home in one year, according to water experts.

The news release referred to the December ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger that ordered the pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta slowed down, reducing the amount of water that flows into the 444-mile aqueduct - water that residents use for drinking, cooking and bathing and that farmers use to grow fruits and vegetables. Wanger ordered the slowdown in an effort to save an indigenous species of fish, the delta smelt, whose population dwindled as they got sucked into the machinery and died. Smelt are vital to the delta ecosystem, scientists say.

The news release said the amount of water lost to member agencies in the first three months of 2008 “is enough to serve more than 4.8 million people for one year.”

More on this story from the Antelope Valley Press by clicking here.

April 12, 2008 · Filed Under DWR & State Water Project, Drought, Weather & Snowpack, Judge Wanger delta smelt ruling