LAKE COUNTY — The possibility of requiring users to conserve water looms on the horizon after the Lake County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution Tuesday to ask water purveyors in Lake County to voluntarily implement conservation measures in light of continuing drought conditions.
This year marks the third in a row that rainfall and groundwater levels have been lower than average, according to officials. Recent rain has helped, but not enough, according to Tom Smythe, a water resources engineer with the Lake County Public Works Department.
“The last two weeks, we have essentially doubled our precipitation for the year. The problem is we”re still only about 50 to 60 percent of the average, so we”re still in a drought situation,” Smythe said.
Wells tested around the county earlier this month showed lower-than-average water levels, according to Smythe.
Supervisors Rob Brown and Jim Comstock turned the discussion toward the possibility of using controlled burns to eliminate water-sucking brush to ensure healthy groundwater supplies. Supervisor Anthony Farrington said alternative methods of removing brush should be considered, including using goats that eat the vegetation and area chipping programs.
Lake County Air Quality Control Officer Doug Gearhart also expressed concern about the health effects of the smoke.
“I would like to see as soon as possible a conservation program that would be mandatory, at least for consideration, and see what that would look like, and bring it to this board, on our districts that we manage ? I have a feeling that we”re three or four years behind and we can”t act soon enough,” Farrington said.
Fifteen wells fed by the Big Valley Aquifer measured 5.8 feet below the average February groundwater level, according to Smythe”s memo to the board. Groundwater levels south of Highway 29 were worse, with three out of five tested wells showing groundwater levels below the average fall level, which Smythe said is considered the low season.
He said that represented an approximately 55 percent groundwater shortfall for the area.
Similarly, Smythe said groundwater levels were measured at 11.6 feet below spring averages in the Scotts Valley and Collayomi Valley aquifers, at 4.1 feet below spring averages in the Upper Lake Valley Aquifer, and at 17 feet below the spring average in the Coyote Valley Aquifer. Water supply wells in county-run water service areas in the Cobb Mountain area tested below average, as well.
Smythe wrote in his Feb. 11 memo that Clear Lake was at its lowest February level since 1991, lower than it was in February 1976, which began a yearlong drought. He wrote that with more than 3 feet of surface water expected to evaporate, the lake level could sink below zero on the Rumsey scale by mid-summer without significant rainfall.
Referencing the ?March miracle,” when Clear Lake rose more than three feet in March of 1991, Smythe wrote, “without a similar miracle, significant impacts to water use and recreation use in Clear Lake will occur.”
Smythe said Tuesday that since he wrote the memo, the rain in the past two weeks brought the lake level up to approximately 2.6 on the Rumsey scale. Clear Lake must reach 3.22 Rumsey before the Yolo County Flood Control and Water Conservation District can release any of the lake”s surface water through the Cache Creek Dam for irrigation.
The Rumsey scale gauges the lake level relative to the Grigsby Riffle, a rock ledge that crosses Cache Creek at a narrow point approximately one and a half miles from Clear Lake that limits the amount of water that can flow through it.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com, or call her directly at 263-5636, ext. 37.
