Rains Wash Out Water Delivery Cutback

One month after ordering severe cutbacks in water allocations, smiling federal officials announced Friday that record March rainfalls were allowing them to restore full deliveries to all customers of the Central Valley Water Project.

Neil W. Schild, assistant regional director for the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation, said officials were making the announcement now, rather than at the May 1 close of the rainy season, to give Central Valley farmers more time to plan for this year’s crops.

A month ago, they had predicted cutbacks by the federal bureau, California’s largest supplier of water, could drive up food prices by forcing farmers to reduce the state’s crop production by as much as $250 million.

“It’s marvelous. March was really an extraordinary event, probably the fifth wettest March in history,” said Donald Paff, chief of the bureau’s Central Valley operations coordinating office.

In late February, the federal officials had said reservoirs were so low and rainfall so scant that they had essentially abandoned any hope of fully meeting their commitments to agriculture, municipal and industrial water users.

Although 17 inches of rain fell in the key watershed area around Mt. Shasta in November, the officials said a two-year drought made the ground so dry that it simply sucked up the water, eliminating much of the runoff for reservoirs. Then the November deluge was followed by an exceptionally dry period in December, January and February, prompting officials to predict a third straight year of severe drought.

Rains Began to Fall

Officials said they decided to order up to a 50% reduction in their water deliveries when it became apparent that March would have to produce double its normal rainfall for them to keep up with their commitments. At the time, they said even normal rainfall in March seemed an improbability.

But then the rains began to fall, and as one big storm followed another, the ground became more saturated and the reservoirs began to fill. By March 23, federal officials announced the cutback would only be 20%, instead of 50%. In the next nine days, 3.4 more inches of rain fell in the northern watershed, and they made the decision to rescind all cutbacks.

Officials were so elated that the official announcement was actually made by Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan.

“It surprised . . . everybody,” Paff said, grinning broadly. “That’s a lot of rain in nine days.”

He cautioned however, that Santa Clara County and the east San Joaquin Valley will still experience shortages. The Friant-Kern Canal system did not share in March’s bounty, and deliveries there will be reduced by 8%, officials said.

While Santa Clara County will get 100% of its allotment from the Central Valley Water Project, the district’s local reservoirs are virtually dry because of a lack of rainfall in that area. A third of the county’s water supply comes from local sources.

State officials at the Department of Water Resources, meanwhile, said they were still evaluating the situation at the California Water Project, although “the tendency is to think there might be another reduction.”

While not actually ordering cutbacks, state officials had warned in February that deliveries to agricultural users could be cut by as much as 40% in May. After the early March rains, they revised their predictions to 20%.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which gets a portion of its water from the state project, said a proposed advertising campaign to promote conservation would probably be refocused because of the improved conditions.

Instead of concentrating on the immediate problem of the drought, he said it will now focus on the long-range need to conserve water.

The district, which gets the bulk of its water from the Colorado River, had not been threatened with actual cutbacks, but it would eventually have been affected by a sustained drought.