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The state Department of Water Resources announced that it plans to only dole out 5 percent of the water requested by water wholesalers who keep Southern California from going dry. The number is only an initial estimate, but it is a sign that California’s water crisis is getting worse, said Dan Masnada, General Manager for Castaic Lake Water Agency.
“This is the lowest initial estimate in the history of the state water project,” he said.
Castaic Lake Water is one of the wholesalers that purifies and sells state water pumped to Southern California from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The agency provides 50 percent of the water in the SCV.
For 2009, the state’s initial estimate was 15 percent.
The estimate comes in December of the preceding year, well before winter storms dump rain at the lower elevations and snow in the Sierra-Nevada mountains. The snow melts in the Spring and state water officials use the amount of snow in the mountains to give a final water allowance on May 1.
Last year, wholesalers statewide like Castaic Lake Water got 40 percent of what they requested.
Masnada expects the numbers coming in May to look just like the 2009 final allowance.
“We anticipate the allocation will be right at 40 percent,” he said.
Castaic Lake Water makes up for the state’s shortfall by buying supplemental water from Kern County.
Three different factors have contributed to the low estimate: A low volume of water in storage, a conservative rain and snow forecast and lawsuits involving the endangered Delta Smelt fish have converged at one time, Masnada said.
Environmentalists filed a lawsuit that limits water pumping in the Delta to help save the endangered species.
The storage issues and the weather forecast are things water planners accounted for and have little to do with the low estimate, he said.
However, the fish drastically changed the state’s water equation.
“The initial allocation would have been above 15 percent if it wasn’t for the lawsuit,” he said.
For now, Masnada is focused on the upcoming winter and hopes a mysterious wet-weather phenomenon can turn the state from drought to deluge and start to ease a three-year long drought.
“An El Niño year could save us,” he said.
