High and Dry : Threat of Cutbacks Rises as Water Levels in Reservoirs Sink

Charles Hatfield, the legendary rainmaker of 1916, where are you now that we need you?

What we need is a couple of back-to-back gullywashers in the next few weeks to settle the dust and to fill up the reservoirs. Just a couple of good soakers, and we will all sleep more soundly, knowing that the rainy days will provide a temporary shield against drought.

Metropolitan Water District authorities say that San Diego County will get its normal share of imported water during the coming dry months. Because MWD’s aqueducts supply about 90% of the county’s water, rumors of a cutback or a rollback to 1985 water delivery levels have local officials looking to their back-country reservoirs for back-up supplies, seeding clouds to encourage more rain and initiating voluntary and mandatory water-conservation plans.

Several San Diego County reservoirs now are showing their mudflat bottoms; others have ugly waterlines, like bathtub rings, along their shorelines, and the rest are maintaining their scenic complexions courtesy of imported water from Northern California and the Colorado River.

Sutherland Reservoir, on the outskirts of Ramona, is one of the most wanting in water. The city of San Diego reservoir has less than 8% of its storage capacity of 29,684 acre-feet and has little chance of filling fast, despite the sporadic showers that have deposited several inches of precipitation in nearby mountain ranges. The water level is 81 feet below the spillway.

The rainfall, according to Ramona Municipal Water District chief Jose Hurtado, simply sinks into the dry, dry ground and never trickles into the North County reservoir. Sutherland serves as one of two sources of water for the Ramona community, he explained. The other source, a Poway connection with the state aqueduct, is scheduled to be shut off in June.

Hurtado is counting on an extension of a year or so on the aqueduct water contract and is praying for more rain to fill the Sutherland source.

Downstream, at the Lake Hodges reservoir, the lake has receded from the newly built boat launching ramp but the floating boat dock has survived the shriveling of the lake.

Hodges, a San Diego city reservoir south of Escondido that serves the communities of Rancho Santa Fe and Solana Beach, gushed over the spillway as late as 1980 but now lies 17 feet or so below its rim.

Water patrons are grousing about the smell and taste of Lake Hodges water, but district officials say that the low level of the lake--37% of capacity--is not to blame. The smelly water--a common complaint before a filtration plant was installed 20 years ago--was caused when a sudden gush of water down distribution pipes dislodged decades-old silt and sediment in the lines, according to water district officials. The smelly liquid, which has been coming out San Dieguito residents’ taps the past week, is safe to drink, despite its odor.

Old-timers in the shoreline community of Del Dios aren’t happy with loss of their lakeside lots, but can remember when the Lake Hodges situation was a lot worse. During the drought days of the late 1950s and 1960s, the lake bed was plowed and turned into a cornfield by enterprising farmers as the water area shrank to a puddle near the dam.

In the South Bay, the Sweetwater Authority reports a 300-acre-foot deficit in its water storage this year. Garry Butterfield, general manager of the district that serves National City, Bonita and part of Chula Vista, explained that the water deficit means that 300 more acre-feet of water have evaporated from the district’s two reservoirs than has trickled in since July 1. One acre-foot is the amount of water that would cover one acre to a depth of one foot.

Normally, Sweetwater Authority officials plan on a surplus of 4,000 acre-feet of locally produced water after evaporation, Butterfield said. The deficit is one of only three or four that have occurred in the past 100 or so years of district records.

Others Feel the Pinch

Sweetwater is not alone in recording a local water deficit, Butterfield said. The same phenomenon is occurring in most reservoirs in the county, especially those in the western coastal slopes where annual rainfall averages 9.5 inches contrasted with a 30-inch average in the mountains to the east.

The district is “stockpiling” imported aqueduct water in its Sweetwater Reservoir in Bonita in anticipation of hot-weather demands, so the lake is at a near-normal level, Butterfield said.

Sweetwater also has joined with the city of San Diego and the Helix Water District on a $100,000 cloud-seeding program to coax more rainfall out of the clouds that cross the county.

The project, which involves dropping silver iodide crystals into the clouds from a light plane, although official this week, won’t get under way until the clouds gather over the districts’ watersheds, stretching inland from near Escondido on the north to the Otay Lakes in South Bay.

Cloud seeding has never been as successful at creating rainfall as was Hatfield the rainmaker. Hatfield was hired by the then-San Diego City Council to bring showers to the dusty countryside. In January, 1916, Hatfield’s magic (or an arctic storm) brought a 5-inch downpour that breeched dams, drowned livestock and a few people and swept a lot of real estate out into the bay.

Today’s modern methods are designed to have a less chaotic effect. Butterfield said cloud seeding has been effective in increasing reservoir levels in the Santa Barbara area by 5% to 10% over the past decade.

“We’ll take whatever we can get,” he said. “We need every extra drop.”

The Helix district’s Cuyamaca Reservoir high in the mountains near Julian is one of the worst-case examples of the local rainfall season. Despite several recent 2- and 3-inch rainfalls in the area, Cuyamaca’s water level has not increased. In fact, it continues to shrink.

Although precipitation has been near normal, “rainfall is not running off into reservoirs,” said Shirley Massey, spokeswoman for the Helix district. “The timing of the rainfall has been such that the water just soaks into the ground.”

Cuyamaca reservoir contains only about 6% of its 11,756-acre-foot capacity. Although it is hardly ever full, she said, its present 763-acre-foot level “is ridiculous.” The Helix district counts on about 4,000 acre-feet of water production locally from Cuyamaca and from runoff into El Capitan Reservoir. But, unless there are a couple of storms, one following closely on the heels of the other, imported aqueduct water will have to fill the need, she said.

Sitting on Huge Lake

Linden Burzell, consulting engineer for two water companies in the desert community of Borrego Springs, points out the irony of the present water picture. In the arid desert area, water is not a problem because the community is sitting on a basin of several million acre-feet of cool clear water.

But Burzell’s clients in the western half of the county “are more than worried,” about what the county’s water future holds as the possibility of a third dry year grows more probable.

MWD, San Diego County’s water supplier, is only a middleman, he explained. The Los Angeles-based water district buys 1.3 million acre-feet of water annually from the Colorado River and another 700,000 to 800,000 acre-feet from the state water projects, Burzell points out.

If federal water authorities cut off Colorado River supplies to which California lost entitlement in 1985, Southern California could be forced to roll back its water use to 1985 levels, despite healthy increases in population and industry since then.

MWD spokesman Bob Gomperz said no restrictive measures have been taken by the district except to give a one-year advance notice to all agricultural water users last May of possible water cutbacks.

Gomperz said the notice was just precautionary and that prospects for the coming summer are for normal water supplies. Besides, he added optimistically, there still are a couple of months left in the rainfall season. Perhaps there will be some good, hard rains locally and throughout the West, as there were in 1986, to erase the reservoir deficits.

The Escondido water department and the Vista Irrigation District depend for local water supplies on Lake Henshaw near Warner Springs. The lake is looking mighty puny these days, but that does not worry district general manager Tom Wilson.

When normal runoff does not replenish the Henshaw reservoir, as it has failed to do for the last two winters, the two districts can turn to the water wells they own on the sprawling Warner Springs Ranch and supplement their supplies from an underground basin estimated to hold about a million gallons.

Wilson said his Vista water district was among the first to implement a mandatory water conservation plan designed to cut down on unnecessary uses immediately and to escalate to restrictive water-use regulations as a water shortage occurs.

The Vista district has yet to impose any of its restrictive sanctions adopted in August, 1987, but the neighboring city of Oceanside went to a Stage 2 water alert in Morro Hills during the torrid Labor Day weekend.

Barry Martin, Oceanside water utilities director, said the August scorcher found the storage tanks serving the Morro Hills area at dangerously low levels, so residents were notified to restrict outdoor water uses, such as lawn watering, irrigation, driveway cleaning and car washing.

Escondido, which recently adopted a similar plan, can levy both civil and criminal penalties on those who ignore the ordinance’s restrictions. As the water shortage grows more severe, the cutbacks become more stringent until, at the ultimate Stage 4 level, water can be used only for preserving the lives of humans and livestock, utilities manager George Lohnes said.

Escondido patterned its water conservation plan after that of its neighbor, Rincon del Diablo Water District, which serves the rural areas surrounding the city.

Gary Arant, Rincon general manager, said his district has been promoting a voluntary conservation program for quite a while with noticeable success.

The Rincon district only has space for about 16 million gallons of water in its storage tanks, which means a 7- to 10-day supply if stretched to the utmost.

Arant has heard talk of a 10% mandatory cutback on MWD water deliveries July 1, and is waiting on a hefty Sierra snowpack to erase both the possibility of a cutback and the worry lines on his brow.

With no local water reserves to fall back on, he concedes, Rincon customers are pawns of the vicissitudes of the weather--and of the MWD.