Snowpack Up Only a Little in Key Region

Water-worried state officials said Monday that the rains and snows of March have helped improve the drought outlook, but that--despite heavy drenchings of Santa Barbara and Sacramento--conditions are only slightly improved in the all-important western Sierra Nevada.

“It just nibbled away at the drought a little,” Bill Helms, spokesman for the Department of Water Resources’ Drought Center, said of a new round of storms that hit California.

Snow measurements taken Monday morning indicated that half an inch of water content had been added to the snowpack, but that still left it woefully short of normal conditions, Helms said. He said the measurements showed the water content in the snowpack has now reached a total of 14 inches. “We should be at about 27 inches,” Helms said.

Despite Helms’ cautious assessment, however, the drought outlook had undoubtedly improved somewhat in such hard-hit regions as Santa Barbara and Fresno.

A slow-moving weekend storm stalled Monday for about 24 hours over Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, dousing coastal areas with two to three inches of rain and dumping four to eight inches of snow in the northern mountains.

Enough runoff collected in Santa Barbara’s Gibraltar Reservoir to provide the city with water for the first time since it went dry in November, 1989. The reservoir, which in normal years had provided the city with about 30% of its water, was virtually empty until this month’s rainfall.

The cold front--which dumped three to five inches of rain on Ojai--was expected to intensify as it moved deeper into Southern California during the night, raising the possibility of flash floods in coastal and canyon areas in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

The front was expected to bring up to three inches of rain along the coast and up to half a foot of snow in the mountains above the 5,000-foot level, said Meteorologist Steve Burback of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. The National Weather Service issued a snow advisory for travelers.

At least two more storms are on the same track, out of the Gulf of Alaska, Burback said.

“Having Gibraltar producing water again is great news,” said Lisa Weeks, drought spokeswoman for Santa Barbara. “A few more storms back to back could fill the reservoir.”

The outlook brightened Monday in the San Joaquin Valley, too. By midafternoon, it had been raining continuously for more than than 24 hours, with a total rainfall of 1.53 inches, raising the season total to 7.26 inches.

Since the beginning of March, almost six inches of precipitation has fallen in Fresno County, raising the expectation of the Fresno Irrigation District that it will receive 45% of its water allocation from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, instead of the 10% it expected two weeks ago.

“We’re smiling over here,” said Bill Burmeister, water systems manager for Fresno.

In the Sacramento Valley, meanwhile, Helms said the March precipitation is 180% of normal, and if the rains continue the area could repeat the “March miracle” of 1989, when spring precipitation was a whopping 250% of normal. Rains ended a critically dry situation that year.

But Helms was pessimistic that such a “miracle” will happen this year because 1991--which was the driest rainy season on record going into March--started out much drier than 1989.

Even the dousing the Sacramento Valley got over the weekend had no effect on the state’s big Oroville Reservoir on the Feather River, where summer water supplies are stored, Helms said.

Meanwhile, after enduring a mostly dry winter, the eastern Sierra was blanketed in March by a series of storms--the latest of which dropped 20 inches of new snow on Mammoth Lakes between 10 a.m. Sunday and midafternoon Monday, according to a National Weather Service spokesman.

“It’s really beautiful, it’s just white everywhere,” said Laurie Johnson, owner of the Snow Goose Inn in Mammoth. “We’re not jam-packed yet, but we hope we will be when the word gets out.”

“Everything is pretty and fairy-tale like and that’s what we live in the mountains for,” said Robin Falkingham, owner of the Command Performance ski rental shop in Mammoth. “I think it’s going to be great for the water this summer. At least it will build the snowpack back up and get some runoff.”

Wally Hofmann, publisher of the weekly Mammoth Times newspaper, said of the latest storm, “It’s obviously going to be beneficial economically. I just couldn’t picture in my mind what Mammoth would have been like in April, May and June without this snow.”

Mammoth Mountain’s ski area, which peaks at 11,000 feet, had gotten 2 to 2 1/2 feet of new snow since Sunday and was still getting precipitation Monday afternoon, said Evan Russell, director of marketing for the ski area.

State officials are expecting more good news on the weather front in the coming week, Helms said, based on predictions from the state’s meteorologists that the “storm door” remains open.

As the state was reporting slight improvements in the drought picture, federal officials also released new forecasts showing they expect the rains to add 1 million acre-feet more of water to storage supplies by Sept. 30 than they originally anticipated. An acre-foot is the amount of water a typical Los Angeles family of five uses in 18 months.

While drought officials continued to dampen hopes in Sacramento, Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) heard testimony in Los Angeles on a bill he is sponsoring to expand the uses of the federal Central Valley Project, the largest water project in the state.

Bradley and Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.) clashed sharply over the proposal to revamp the federal water project so it will serve more urban areas throughout California. It would also restore fisheries, wildlife habitats and wetlands damaged by project operations over the past 40 years.

The Bradley plan would create a water bank allowing cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego to bid for water put up for sale by Central Valley Project customers. Also, whenever existing water contracts are renewed, farmers would have to give up 10% of their supplies in order to obtain new long-term contracts. The extra water would then go to restoration of natural areas.

Federal law now limits project water deliveries primarily to farms in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, with some supplies going to urban users in Santa Clara, Contra Costa and Alameda counties. The federal project delivers more than 7-million acre-feet in normal years, about 20% of all of California’s developed surface water supply.

Bradley, chairman of the water and power subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said his measure was an effort to overcome the inequitable allocation of water under the federal project, both during the drought but also over the long term.

“How can you blame drought for the fact that after five years of low rainfall, farmers are still growing rice in the desert while millions of other Californians have had to watch their crops or gardens die?” Bradley said in an opening statement.

But Seymour, the first Californian to serve on the senate’s water committee since 1970, said, “California does not need the federal government to dictate how it should use its scarce water resources.”

Later he told reporters: “I’m opposed to taking away water rights. It’s a redistribution of water rights that’s basically the problem.”

The debate in Southern California did little to quash the elation in one Northern California region--in and around Eureka in Humboldt County--where officials were cautiously proclaiming victory in a battle against this year’s drought conditions.

Rainfall through last weekend brought the season’s total to 56% of normal and was more than enough to fill the 50,000 acre-foot Ruth Lake reservoir that serves 60% of the homes and businesses in Humboldt County.