CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / STATEWIDE

For the second time in a month, state water managers are upping the amount of water they say they will deliver to Central and Southern California this year.

The State Water Project, which supplies about a third of Southern California’s water, increased allocations on Thursday from 20% to 30% of contractor requests. The final allocation decision will be made in May.

The dire drought predictions of early winter yielded to less gloomy projections after February and March brought much-needed storms to the Sierra Nevada and northern sectors of the state. Federal and state water managers have increased projected deliveries, but they remain below normal -- as does statewide reservoir storage.

As a result, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which depends on the state project for a large portion of its supplies, announced earlier this week that it would effectively cut deliveries to local agencies by 10%.

Los Angeles is also about to adopt a conservation plan that would make heavy water users pay a penalty. This is the third dry year in a row in California, but it is not turning out to be the hydrological disaster that officials feared. Water levels in Lake Oroville, the biggest reservoir in the state system, are at 72% of normal for the date -- better than at the same point last year.

-- Bettina Boxall