One of the most impressive was Hetch Hetchy, which provides drinking water to 2.6 million people in San Francisco and other Bay Area communities. Commission. Additionally, the bounty helps the more than two dozen communities in Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties that get their water from the city. Previously, Kellie covered dining news and trends, visual arts, events and nightlife for the Arizona Republic, and freelanced for the former Contra Costa Times. a minimum, according to the San Francisco Public Utilities So on Jan 10 were at 82% of the average for Jan 10. My guess would be that the recent systems have been cold and so they are predominantly dropping snow on the watershed. I find myself coming back to this every few days to check on our water . Reservoir behind OShaughnessy Dam does not require filtration. The OShaughnessy Dam i s 300 feet tall only medium-sized by todays standards. Copyright 2023Water Education Foundation. Partly because of low water, the rivers chinook salmon runs have plummeted from tens of thousands of fish annually a few decades ago to fewer than 1,000 in recent years. Each row represents one reservoir, with bars showing how much of the reservoir is filled (blue) and unfilled (brown). Before joining the Chronicle, Alexander worked as a freelance writer and as a staff reporter for several media organizations, including The Fresno Bee and Bay Area News Group, writing about government, politics and the environment. sends student to hospital, Heres how much rain and snow is on the way this weekend, Your Privacy Choices (Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads). Similar to the water supply issues discussed above, the amount of power replacement is small in a statewide context less than of 1% of the renewable power supply being developed this decade alone. Part of the lake is on the California side, but it has zero California water impact beyond the immediate Tahoe residents. Fish and Wildlife Service that provides an immediate $4 million investment for habitat improvements for fisheries in the Tuolumne River. Water data back to 1956 are available online. It seems likely one of those two readings is wrong. You can find the charts below from the California Department of Water Resources website. You can also share a custom URL by clicking the Save URL button which will put the custom URL into the URL bar of your browser which you can then copy and share. Charts from the California Department of Water Resources show conditions at key state reservoirs on Oct. 22 (left) and on Nov. 2 (right). The Department of Water Resources, which manages the state's water supply, said in a statement that there are several possible reasons for the difference in inflow amounts between the two reservoirs. Thats up more than 400,000 acre-feet since early December, before the unrelenting series of atmospheric river storms blew through California between Christmas and mid-January. And early forecasts show the rest of the wet season is not likely to produce enough precipitation. The name Hetch Hetchy is derived from a Sierra Miwok No it is correct. Tracy Barbutes, Freelance / Special to The Chronicle, Heres where California reservoir levels stand after this weeks rains. Didnt realize how bad things were there. The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir that supplies San Francisco, seen here in February, is among those that have refilled after two months of storms. Meant this comment for the integrated snowpack and reservoir view. California reservoir levels: . Current conditions of LAKE OR RESERVOIR WATER SURFACE ELEVATION ABOVE NAVD 1988, LAKE OR RESERVOIR WATER SURFACE ELEVATION ABOVE NGVD 1929, and RESERVOIR STORAGE are available. It looks like the red and blue lines are backwards on Folsom. Thank you for the time and effort in creating the graphs. The average for this time of year is approximately 4,659.57ft, plus or minus 39ft. California drought: Charts show where reservoir levels stand after a dry January, Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area. Major snowstorm might leave you stranded, New 101 express lanes opens in Bay Area. Congress had to approve the project because it was Thats a very poor design. What happened to the Hetch Hetchy level? Long-term values for reservoir inflows use maximum number of complete water years in record. setTimeout(function (){ "It is unknown how much area of the Feather River and Shasta Lake drainages are impacted by hydrophobic soils.". Trailhead address: Evergreen Road (Hetch Hetchy Road), Yosemite National Park, CA 95321. It was my first time using D3 and it took me a long time to get up to speed. An improvement: Could you include a bar for Last year at this date? best to drain the valley. Meanwhile, the group Restore Hetch Hetchy is urging the SFPUC to abandon Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. ) or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. These sources are diverse in both the origin of the supply snowmelt, rainfall and recharge of groundwater and their location within our system. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is involved in on-going negotiations with the State on a voluntary agreement for implementation of the Bay-Delta Plan, which calls for large increases in water releases on the tributaries to the San Joaquin River, a major tributary to the Bay-Delta. I noticed that Folsom does not change whereas every reservoir changes on an hourly update. Units are in kaf, thousands of acre feet. Data and Tools But they'll cost you, Fight at high school basketball game in S.F. I hear from the farmers that we waste 80% of the water by flushing it into the ocean. I also hear the environmentalists say, the streams and wildlife need water, so flush it into the ocean. Its an interesting dilemma. In whats known as the Bay-Delta Plan, state water regulators are amid a years-long effort to negotiate a policy for how much water should be kept in rivers that flow to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to meet the needs of both people and wildlife. This is a very clear graph and I cannot imagine the hours you have put in while setting it up and doing the maintenance. An official website of the United States government. That said, most of its outflow makes its way down Feather River (via Rock Creek Reservoir) and ultimately into Orville. You dont see runoff right away, the snow is still up there, frozen, doing what we want it to do, he said. Much of the recent inflow was to Hetch Hetchy, which can hold. Hetch Hetchy water travels 160 miles via gravity from Yosemite to the San Francisco Bay Area. With modest additional investments San Francisco will be able to maintain an uninterrupted supply of high quality Tuolumne River water. What period does CA use for Historical Average? It will be very different depending on the period chosen. If you are on a computer, you can hover your cursor over a reservoir and the dashboard at the top will provide information about that individual reservoir. https://cdec.water.ca.gov/dynamicapp/QueryDaily?s=SHA The extensive amount of storage, which is designed to benefit the Bay Area as droughts become more severe with climate change, has become a sticking point in a longstanding environmental battle over how much water the city should be taking from rivers. Yes, and why is Twitchell Dam also not listed? The construction of the Hetch Hetchy Railroad took place from 1915 to 1918. There are no alerts at this time. This is also affected by most of these dams multi-purpose nature where they are near constantly releasing for power(like Shasta) or to make room for flood control capacity(like Folsom). 2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205 P.S. I know this might be difficult to display but Im very curious on the actual amounts of water consumed on a monthly basis and if this is somehow processed in a certain between what is agricultural and what is non-commercial etc? Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. The worst possible scenario is it just remains completely dry. I would think with the rain it would get to historical average and then more outflow would happen. While constructed and owned by San Francisco, the water system was in fact planned to benefit the greater San Francisco Bay Area population. Thanks. 501(c)3 organization, federal tax ID #942419885. Quite an eye opener. . This is wonderful information. reserved. All rights reserved. The judge also noted the provision of the state . I appreciate the information you are providing. 95 percent of. Water storage facilities include watersheds, dams, and reservoirs including: Calaveras, San Antonio, Crystal Springs, Pilarcitos, and San Andreas. function resizeframe(){ Water is rapidly flowing into the state's reservoirs. These graphs will always read low because they represent the percentage of the seasonal average at some point before the end of the season. The snowpack acts as a natural reservoir and slowly releases water.. }, false); Lake Tahoe really isnt part of California water, as the outflow goes to Nevada. "This was rare for October. River. BAWSCA agencies advocated for the capital improvement program that was adopted by the SFPUC in 2002, and are actively monitoring its implementation. Thank you for a beautiful job. Your tools are awesome just hurts when you receive bad data at times! They placed a few dissipators just before the river. draining the reservoir to court, arguing in 2015 that the Although Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is the most well-known, it stores less than 25% of the systems water. But it has flooded nine miles of a glacier-carved valley and blocks access to the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne and other nearby areas. The regional water system provides water to 2.4 million people in San Francisco, Santa Clara, Alameda and San Mateo counties. Especially for small ones it is hard to identify them and click on them. If we reach 100% after the current rains and then it stops raining for the season, then our percentage will start going down. The data on water storage comes from the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) Data Exchange Center. Thats enough to supply the citys service area for perhaps seven years. Why is it not listed? Heres an example of that data for Shasta, where you can see the daily inflows and outflows: In another sign that Californias drought is easing, San Francisco captured more than a years worth of water in just one months time.