[env-trinity] SF Chronicle- Why water levels remain low at one major California reservoir, even after rain

[Seth Naman - NOAA Federal]

All,

Diversions through the Judge Francis Carr tunnels can be found in a couple
different ways:

1. At the TRRP website: https://www.trrp.net/restoration/flows/current/ scroll
to the bottom of the page for current Trinity Reservoir inflows and gage
data for the Trinity River, including the Judge Francis Carr tunnels. TRRP
staff have dedicated a lot of time and energy over the years to try and
make this information non their website as easily accessible and as user
friendly to the public as possible.

2. At the California Data Exchange Center Website: cdec.water.ca.gov.
Select Historical Data: https://cdec.water.ca.gov/dynamicapp/selectQuery and
enter "JCR" in the Station ID, select either daily or monthly data, and the
start and end date of your interest. Here is an example of daily data from
3/3/23 to 4/3/23:

https://cdec.water.ca.gov/dynamicapp/selectQuery?Stations=JCR&SensorNums=110&dur_code=D&Start=2023-03-03&End=2023-04-03


There are state, federal, county and tribal staff who can help answer
questions if you have them. Reach out at the TRRP contact page
https://www.trrp.net/contact-us/ or ask someone who you could talk to for
information about a certain topic that you have. And feel free to reach out
to me if you have questions. This would be much better for everyone
involved, rather than making assumptions about whether or not agencies or
entities are trustworthy.

Seth

On Sun, Apr 2, 2023 at 8:41 PM Andrew Orahoske <ecolaw at gmail.com> wrote:

> Still, it would be more appreciated to see the actual out of basin
> diversions through Carr Tunnel to Whiskeytown Reservoir in real time like a
> normal river gauge. I fear there is much about diversions to the Sacramento
> that most Californians would rather not discuss, no matter your political
> beliefs.
>
> Until we know this information on Trinity diversions and can participate
> in the decision making, there is no reasoned solution.
>
> As far as we can tell, the governments have been draining the Trinity for
> their schemes down south, as always, every dam year. In a year like this,
> with historic snowpack everywhere, the Carr Tunnel should be shut down
> early and often.
>
> Andrew Orahoske
> Independent Trinity River Advocate
>
> On Apr 2, 2023, at 5:29 PM, Sari Sommarstrom <sari at sisqtel.net> wrote:
>
> 
> March was a good month for snow (better than rain) in the Trinity Lake
> watershed as well as the rest of the Klamath basin. Trinity Lake is the
> largest reservoir dependent on snowmelt (unlike Shasta Lake), says a 3/13
> press release by BuRec. Local rumors have also blamed repairs on Trinity
> Dam for the delay in filling:
> https://www.siskiyou.news/2023/03/12/water-from-trinity-lake-is-being-drained-for-repairs/
>
> Too much snow hindered access by the USFS for the snow courses in their
> March 1 Snow Survey for the Trinity, but still the 2 out of 6 measured were
> at 116% and 128%:
> https://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=COURSES.202303
>
> For April 1, the snow surveys are still in progress, with special
> snowmobiles needed to access the most difficult sites. So far, the results
> are showing for Trinity (1 of 6 sites at 131%), Scott (2 of 5 sites at
> 151%), and Shasta (2 of 3 sites at 175%) watersheds.
> https://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=COURSES
>
> Oregon's Upper Klamath Basin's snow water content is up to 165% today.
> https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/wcc/home/quicklinks/imap#version=167&elements=&networks=!&states=CA,NV,OR,WA&basins=!&hucs=&minElevation=&maxElevation=&elementSelectType=all&activeOnly=true&activeForecastPointsOnly=false&hucLabels=true&hucIdLabels=false&hucParameterLabels=true&stationLabels=&overlays=&hucOverlays=or_8,state&basinOpacity=70&basinNoDataOpacity=70&basemapOpacity=100&maskOpacity=55&mode=data&openSections=dataElement,parameter,date,options,elements,location,networks,baseMaps,overlays,labels&controlsOpen=true&popup=&popupMulti=&popupBasin=&base=esriNgwm&displayType=basin&basinType=or_8&dataElement=WTEQ&depth=-8&parameter=PCTMED&frequency=DAILY&duration=I&customDuration=1&dayPart=B&monthPart=E&forecastPubDay=1&forecastExceedance=50&useMixedPast=true&seqColor=1&divColor=7&scaleType=D&scaleMin=&scaleMax=&referencePeriodType=POR&referenceBegin=1981&referenceEnd=2010&minimumYears=20&hucAssociations=true&relativeDate=0&lat=42.033&lon=-120.509&zoom=7.0
>
> And it's been cold up here (and lightly snowing right now), with little
> snowmelt yet happening. While this region is not having a record Wet Water
> Year like much of the state, the precipitation is turning out to be Above
> Average. So let's look at the latest data before claiming that drought
> conditions continue to prevail in the Klamath basin.
>
> ~Sari Sommarstrom, Ph.D.
> Watershed Consultant (retired)
> Etna
> ------------------------------
> *From: *"Tom Stokely" <tgstoked at gmail.com>
> *To: *env-trinity at mailman.dcn.org
> *Cc: *"claire hao" <claire.hao at sfchronicle.com>
> *Sent: *Sunday, April 2, 2023 4:22:36 PM
> *Subject: *[env-trinity] SF Chronicle- Why water levels remain low at one
> major California reservoir, even after rain
>
> While I'm sure some of the factors that the quoted people in this article
> talk about are true, they fail to recognize that Trinity Lake is twice the
> size of the average annual runoff, so refill is slow.
>
> TS
>
>
> https://www.sfchronicle.com/climate/article/california-drought-water-level-17872187.php
> Why water levels remain low at one major California
> reservoir, even after rain
> Claire Hao
> Updated: April 1, 2023 9 p.m.
>
>
> After an extraordinarily wet winter, most reservoirs in California are at,
> over or
> near their historical average capacity.
> But there’s a major exception: Trinity Lake, in far northern California,
> the third largest
> reservoir in California behind Shasta and Oroville reservoirs. Trinity is
> only at 51% of its historical average capacity — and 37% of capacity
> overall — as
> of April 1, according to data from the Department of Water Resources.
> Lewiston Dam is on the Trinity River, which has received less rainfall
> than other parts of the state.
>
> Trinity may be filling slower than other reservoirs because the
> northernmost
> part of the state has received less rainfall relative to other parts of
> the state,
> according to Jeffrey Mount, senior fellow with the Public Policy Institute
> of
> California Water Policy Center.
> Additionally, Trinity “is heavily dependent on snowpack; versus Shasta,
> which is
> mostly dependent on rainfall to fill,” Mary Lee Knecht, Bureau of
> Reclamation
> Region 10 public affairs officer, wrote in an email to the Chronicle. Much
> of the
> snowfall may not melt and flow into the reservoir until late spring or
> summer,
> according to the Trinity River Restoration Program.
> According to a closely watched map from the U.S. Drought Monitor, the
> northernmost parts of the state continue to remain in “moderate drought” in
> counties such as Siskiyou, Modoc, Lassen, Shasta and Trinity, with
> interior parts
> of Northern California also remaining “abnormally dry.”
> Gov. Gavin Newsom rolled back some drought restrictions last week but said
> he
> didn’t revoke his drought emergency proclamation because of persistent
> dryness
> in certain parts of the state.
> “It is incumbent upon us to recognize that the conditions have radically
> changed
> throughout the state, but not enough in places like Klamath and around the
> Colorado River Basin to call for the end of the drought in California,”
> Newsom
> said at a news conference last month.
> The parts of the state that remain dry are also usually arid areas: The
> northeast
> corner of California is known to be a rain shadow, whereas the southeast —
> where drought also persists — is desert, Mount said. The southeast corner
> of
> California also gets much of its precipitation from summertime monsoon
> rains
> instead of winter storms, Mount said.
> Inyo, San Bernardino, Imperial and Riverside counties remain in “moderate
> drought,” with parts of Inyo and San Bernardino counties in “severe
> drought,”
> according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
> Most of the atmospheric rivers that hit California since December have been
> concentrated in the Bay Area and Central Coast, with some also hitting the
> Los
> Angeles region, Mount said, referring to a map of atmospheric rivers from
> the
> UC San Diego Institution of Oceanography.
> Few, however, have been directed at the Klamath Basin, with many landing
> just
> north or south of the region or brushing against it, Mount said. Trinity
> Lake is
> part of the Klamath Basin, with Trinity River being the largest tributary
> of the
> Klamath River.
> “For what you might call the luck of the draw, just enough of those
> atmospheric
> rivers shifted a couple hundred miles to the south this year rather than
> plowing
> into their normal location, which would be in the Trinity, Klamath
> watershed
> and Shasta and upper Sacramento. So we’ve got one of those years where we
> turned our normal gradient of precipitation — dry in the south, wet in the
> north
> — and flipped it so that our far north was not particularly wet,” Mount
> said.
> But even areas of California that on paper are out of drought will still
> feel the
> effects of long-term water supply problems. The Drought Monitor can be
> “notoriously unreliable” for California because it doesn’t take into
> account
> groundwater conditions — which have been slow to recover despite winter’s
> deluges — and the fact that California transports water across the state
> to meet
> local needs, according to Mount.
>
> Even if “the drought is largely over, water scarcity is enduring,” said
> Jay Lund,
> vice director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. That remains
> true
> in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, where it may take years for
> groundwater to recover from the overpumping during drought years.
> It also remains true in the Klamath Basin, where contentious debates about
> water use between agriculture and ecosystem preservation, which the drought
> exacerbated, won’t be alleviated soon, Lund said.
> “Tribes want to see lots of releases of water for salmon. Farmers are
> really seeing
> very little water from the projects because … of tremendous changes that
> are
> going to be occurring with the removal of some of the hydropower dams.
> It’s just
> a lively place for water conflicts,” Lund said.
> Why water levels remain low at one major California reservoir
> https://www.sfchronicle.com/climate/article/california-drought-water-le...
>
> To the south, in San Bernardino County, Heather Dyer, CEO of the San
> Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District, is not ready to declare the
> end of the
> drought either. The water district’s service area has received 56.9 inches
> this wet
> season, above the historical average of 31.1 inches, she said.
> Still, when looking at the pattern of rainfall over the past 20 years,
> this year’s
> above-average total hasn’t made up for the cumulative loss of
> precipitation the
> region has suffered since 1997, Dyer said. The district’s cumulative
> departure
> from the mean since then has trended downward, with wet years like this
> only
> marginally shifting the marker upward, she said.
> “To me, being in a drought is basically the cumulative amount of rain over
> time,
> and what that means to our ecosystems and our water systems,” Dyer said.
> “It’s
> going to take more than one wet year to get out of that hole.”
> In anticipation of future dry years, the San Bernardino Valley Municipal
> Water
> District is starting construction on a new stormwater capture project in
> April,
> which Dyer estimates will take 18 months to complete.
> “I wish we had that in place. I wish that many water agencies had those
> types of
> systems in place,” she said. “I feel like this has given me a new sense of
> urgency
> that we need to be building infrastructure for the future, and this year
> is exactly
> why we need to do that.”
> Reach Claire Hao: claire.hao at sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @clairehao_
>
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-- 
Seth Naman
Fisheries Biologist
National Marine Fisheries Service
1655 Heindon Rd
Arcata, CA 95521
Cell: 707-498-8236
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