BAWSCA Board of Directors Meeting, March 16, 2023, 6:30 PM. San Francisco and the thousands of suburban . Hetch Hetchy water travels 160 miles via gravity from Yosemite to the San Francisco Bay Area. . . a minimum, according to the San Francisco Public Utilities Together, the BAWSCA agencies account for two-thirds of water consumption from the system and pay for two-thirds of its upkeep. Locked padlock According to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Hetch Long-term values for reservoir inflows use maximum number of complete water years in record. Thank you for a beautiful job. Hetch-Hetchy predicted to fill by end of the snowmelt period 2020-2021 Winter season continues to be dry 2019-2020 was dry, although key differences Feb. 2020 was unusually warm, which impacted snowfall levels and water demands; Feb 2021 was cooler, and hence snowfall level higher and water use lower Congress had to approve the project because it was I dont think its currently above the historical average, not below 1 year ago. The gain came after weather gauges in the area recorded more than 5 inches from one storm. We provide water directly to customers in San Francisco and wholesale through 26 Water agencies in Alameda, Santa Clara, and San Mateo counties. The new 68-mile (109 km) railroad wound its way up the narrow canyon of the Tuolumne River past sharp curves and up steep 4% grades. Water data back to 1956 are available online. It looks like the red and blue lines are backwards on Folsom. The remaining 15 percent of water comes from runoff in the Alameda and Peninsula watersheds. She is a University of Washington graduate. I also added the ability to select specific reservoirs to display on the graph and share a custom URL which will point those selected reservoirs (click on list button on top right of dashboard). Northern California's reservoir levels continued to rise in the week after an atmospheric river slammed the state with torrential rain and high winds. In 2007, the Bush scenic mountain valley in a national park. Born in Seoul, Yoohyun began her career in Arizona, where she worked for two of the state's largest newspapers covering various beats, including criminal justice and education. If you are on a mobile device you can tap the reservoir to get that same info. Shasta is the reservoir with the largest capacity and so it is the tallest row. An official website of the United States government. This is my first year watching the levels, so maybe Im missing something. How do I pay my bill? Delivering approximately 260 million gallons of water per day, the regional system consists of over 280 miles of pipelines, over 60 miles of tunnels, 11 reservoirs, five pump stations and two water treatment plants. James Q. Martin / Restore Hetch Hetchy Show More Show Less 4 of 7 Gavin Newsom asked all California residents to voluntarily reduce use by 15% compared with use in 2019. Also, do they provide inflows and outflows for locations? The overall storage is said to have dropped by 57.4 to 56.4 (or 302 kaf). San Francisco voters have demonstrated their opposition to The valley is Important Legacy real-time page. What period does CA use for Historical Average? It will be very different depending on the period chosen. The Bay Area's main reservoir is up 21 feet. The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir that supplies San Francisco, seen here in February, is among those that have refilled after two months of storms. Is that a good thing? Thanks. This dashboard is great! BAWSCA agencies also are implementing water conservation and water recycling projects to help preserve this precious resource for their communities, and are working to identify alternate sources of water supply. Hetch Hetchy Level before the storm: 3,729.68 feet Level after the storm: 3,750.99 feet Total rise: 21.31 feet Storage before the storm: 221,500 acre-feet Storage after the storm: 257,800. Thanks for the prompt reply! the map graph doesnt include berryessa. Hetch Hetchy water travels 160 miles via gravity from Yosemite to the San Francisco Bay Area. "Soils that have become hydrophobic due to wildfire can also contribute to increased runoff because the water is less able to penetrate the burned soil," the department said. Similar to the water supply issues discussed above, the amount of power replacement is small in a statewide context less than of 1% of the renewable power supply being developed this decade alone. **new combined California reservoir and snowpack visualizer**, made a bar graph showing the overall level of water in the major California reservoirs, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) Data Exchange Center. I havent spent much time looking at it but that data is on the CDEC website. It certainly looks dry at least until the last week in February, he said. sends student to hospital, Heres how much rain and snow is on the way this weekend, Your Privacy Choices (Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads). Love easy to read and understand information. Maybe bad data. Major snowstorm might leave you stranded, New 101 express lanes opens in Bay Area. The data on water storage comes from the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) Data Exchange Center. Begin at O'Shaughnessy Dam. The upcountry portion of the System begins with Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park. Current conditions of LAKE OR RESERVOIR WATER SURFACE ELEVATION ABOVE NGVD 1929 and RESERVOIR STORAGE are available. The construction of the Hetch Hetchy Railroad took place from 1915 to 1918. draining the reservoir to court, arguing in 2015 that the Related articles . reserved. Required fields are marked *. Thats a great suggestion and one that would be particularly helpful! I notice Briones Reservoir is not on the list. Hi, I started by using this page (https://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=RES) to determine which reservoirs to include and for some reason Almanor isnt on the list. A 1 week change would be interesting to show on each. administration attempted to allocate funds to study removing the The main reason for the discrepancy, the department said, is that the focus of the atmospheric river was generally between the Golden Gate and Mount Lassen, meaning that the Feather River watershed received much more rainfall than the Shasta Lake drainage area. The captured water is piped 150 miles to the Bay Area. While the long-term voluntary agreement work continues, the SFPUC does not want to wait to restore the Tuolumne Rivers ecosystem. She joined the Chronicle as a data reporter in 2021. Especially for small ones it is hard to identify them and click on them. Id only be interested in the totals from Oroville and Shasta. Read more about the data team and their work. If a reservoir gets filled to 100% and more, the dam will break and many cities will get flooded, so the operators are careful. Have you looked into that side of the water management equation? Just a wistful thought, it would be really cool to graph the water release statistics. If you click on the list button in the top right of the dashboard, it will show a list of the reservoirs (in order of size from largest to smallest) and you can check which ones you would like to display. The Bay Area portion of the System includes water collection, treatment, and transmission facilities from the Alameda East Portal to the wholesale service area and terminal reservoirs in San Francisco. I believe the spillway was designed by the State. As of Feb. 1, the systems total water storage was just over 1.3 million acre-feet, or about 92% of capacity. The trail includes spectacular views of Tueeulala and Wapama Falls. Why is Lake Nacimiento and Lake San Antonio not listed? They have restoredMono Lake,improved stream flows on the North Coast and in theCentral Valleyand diminished the threat to native fish in the Bay Delta. Interesting. This website along with another shows that Eastmans level is still rising even though we have not had rain in more than a week. Nate, thanks for the insight. A lock ( For perspective, water demand across the SFPUCs service area of 2.7 million people was about 205,000 acre-feet last fiscal year. More about the Tuolumne River Voluntary Agreement can be found athttp://www.tuolumnerivermanagementplan.com. Francisco Bay Area. This is a great and very thoughtfully designed web site! It didnt end the drought, but it was definitely really good," said Ritchie. Upcountry and the Bay Area. Units are in kaf, thousands of acre feet. Awesome work!! Water is such a fascinating topic and Id hate to have to be a water manager making a decision on how much to release to avoid reservoir flooding. It does not meet the California definition of renewable energy. a broad meaning that had been previously applied in an Most local reservoir inflow timeseries are too short to calculate long-term values. their water supply would cost hundreds of millions of dollars at mandate within John Muir and the Therefore flood control agencies take the more conservative route and order the release of water. over the past few days. May 24, 2022 - BAWSCA Statement About the Adoption of a Systemwide Water Use Reduction of 11%. Curt, Good point re the colder weather dropping more snow instead of rain at higher elevations this year. 1 covering up to $875 million and much of the rest coming from federal loans to water suppliers. So included in DWR #S. Your Privacy Choices (Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads). Saved to my favorites now. in 2018. This hike follows the shoreline of the reservoir with moderate up and downhill hiking. While it may seem that Decembers production could get us through the rest of the season, Rizzardo explains that in hydrology, you need consistent water shed to keep soils happy. He fears that without more precipitation this season, well enter our third very dry year. No it is correct. There are many very small reservoirs (relative to Shasta) so the bars will be very thin to the point where they are barely a sliver or may not even show up. it will be cool if there is a way to track the change since Dec or some such date. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander. Yoohyun Jung is the Deputy Data Editor for The San Francisco Chronicle. Excellent graphic! The half-hour drive to Hetch Hetchy from CA Highway 120 begins outside the park boundaries. Thats a very poor design. earthquake. . environmental context. Water is rapidly flowing into the state's reservoirs. Flood control agencies (not DWR) have the most say in regard to releases. Copyright Barry Rokeach, 2014. But Sites would be what's called an off-channel . https://cdec.water.ca.gov/dynamicapp/QueryDaily?s=SHA diversion of water? Restore Hetch Hetchy claimed the phrase had The commission plans to decide Nov. 23 whether to formally ask customers to conserve water. Wapama Falls (moderate) 5 mi (8 km) round-trip; 2 hours. Wife of missing Bay Area radio host says Jeffrey Vandergrift will not Sen. Dianne Feinstein is hospitalized in San Francisco with shingles, California extends deadline to file 2022 income taxes to match IRS decision, Here's where California reservoir levels stand after this week's rains, Going to Tahoe this weekend? Secure .gov websites use HTTPS It carried workers and materials for the dam, as well as tourists, postage and other amenities. Steve Ritchie, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's assistant general manager for water, said the additional water amounted to roughly 11% of the reservoir's total capacity. If you look at this chart for Hetch Hetchy, you can see that the biggest and steadiest rise is between March and July, https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/11275500/#parameterCode=00054&period=P365D&compare=true. The blue line indicates the reservoirs water level one year ago today. I am new to the state. The reservoir is now projected to cost $4.4 billion, with Prop. So on Jan 10 were at 82% of the average for Jan 10. At the beginning of this water year, which started on October 1, 2022, the state's largest water reservoir, Lake Shasta, was a third full, at 33 percent. To reach Hetch Hetchy, you have to exit Yosemite National Park and re-enter it. This file photo shows Shasta Lake. Similar findings are described in theUC Davis studyRe-Assembling Hetch HetchyandUS Bureau of Reclamation study. The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park can store up to 117 billion gallons of drinking water that is used for the Hetch Hetchy Regional Water System that provides water for 2.6 . Water data back to 1930 are available online. function resizeframe(){ So its volume is counted as Orville inflow. Hours: Year-round, but only accessible by car when the Hetch Hetchy Road is open. Python is used to extract the data from this page hourly and wrangle the data in to a clean format. O'Shaughnessy Dam was built on the Tuolumne River in 1923 to create Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Forty-six percent . Rizzardo said there was a decent amount of flow into the reservoirs into January, even though weather-wise it was bone dry, a result of lower elevation snow at 4,000 to 6,000 feet making its way into the reservoirs. Visualization was done in javascript and specifically the D3.js visualization library. Lake Shasta, the state's largest reservoir, rose 2.9 feet and added 31,020 acre-feet of water. This was helpful to project seasonal trends & storm impacts. Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. In response to the Bay-Delta Plan, the SFPUC and the Modesto and Turlock Irrigation Districts have proposed the Tuolumne River Voluntary Agreement, a combination of flow and non-flow measures sufficient to improve all life-stages of native fish populations in the lower Tuolumne River. Lake Mendocino, which has a capacity of 122,400 acre feet, saw the biggest boost from 17% of storage capacity in December to 35% in January. The BAWSCA agencies are therefore key stakeholders in ensuring the system serves as a reliable source of high quality water. The amount stored is increasing, just not by a lot. Remaining Capacity text in the legend should be brown? . The group says the recent plethora of water shows that the city could do without Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, by using other storage facilities that have filled and pursuing new projects to capture the surplus. It used to be full (and beyond). 9 of 12 10 of 12 Hetch Hetchy Reservoir with Wapama Falls near Groveland, Calif. on Wednesday March 12, 2014, is currently at fifty percent of capacity. Even with all the rain and floods, still a long way to fill them to capacity. Restore Hetch Hetchy. We own and operate the Hetch Hetchy Regional Water System which serves 2.7 million customers. The proportion of blue to brown will show how full it is, while the red line shows the historical level that reservoir is typically at for this date of the water year. At times, nearly 90% of the flow of the Tuolumne River is piped off by the SFPUC and other water agencies in the region. Trinity Lake, with a capacity of 2,447,650 acre-feet, had the smallest increase, from 29% in December to 30% in January. "It is unknown how much area of the Feather River and Shasta Lake drainages are impacted by hydrophobic soils.". The main goal of this visualization is to provide a quick overview of the status of the main reservoirs in the state and how they compare to historical levels. All rights From the main road, it's about a 20- to 25-minute drive to the parking area. United States. Great URL. The SFPUC hoards water in dry years when they dont need to, said Peter Drekmeier, policy director at the conservation group Tuolumne River Trust. San Francisco's water-bank in Don Pedro Reservoir, downstream on the Tuolumne River, holds twice as much water as Hetch Hetchy. Amy Graff is the news editor for SFGATE. Great stuff. United States. provides water to 2.7 million residents and businesses in the San Restoring Hetch Hetchy will require some changes in how San Francisco moves and stores water. And while one storm didn't come close to ending the drought, some reservoirs in Northern California, especially those that fell right in the path of the storm, saw significant gains. use must be reasonable.. document.getElementById('globes').contentWindow.location.reload(); Official websites use .gov With modest additional investments San Francisco will be able to maintain an uninterrupted supply of high quality Tuolumne River water. A truly excellent project. This is a very clear graph and I cannot imagine the hours you have put in while setting it up and doing the maintenance. This is of particular interest as the self-imposed restrictions deadline is approaching and the federal government may have to step in and mandate restrictions across the 7 states, including California. Thats up more than 400,000 acre-feet since early December, before the unrelenting series of atmospheric river storms blew through California between Christmas and mid-January. Kudos to the designers. Is the Stanley Quencher tumbler worth its TikTok hype? Spring snowmelt runs down the Tuolumne River and fills Hetch Hetchy, the largest reservoir in our water system. the issue, including those under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hetch hetchy reservoir level percentage Rivers and Streams Streams draining into the Peninsula Watershed within the project area are relatively small, steep, and in a 2021-11-17. What rates am I paying? The water system, which includes the landmark Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, is expected to fill this winter, for the first time since 2019, with nearly 1.5 million acre-feet of water. Waterfalls gushed at Hetch Hetchy after an atmospheric river event in October 2021. This would allow us to see important, but noise-level reservoirs like hetch hetchy. City officials have touted their efforts to help salmon, for example by timing water releases to assist with migration and restoring breeding grounds. I have to agree with many people here what a great job making such a clear graph of whats happening. The problem is that we have no idea of knowing ahead of time what kind of storms well have and how long theyll last, but the reservoir operators have to be super careful and extra cautious, so they periodically let the water flow out. Current conditions of LAKE OR RESERVOIR WATER SURFACE ELEVATION ABOVE NGVD 1929 and RESERVOIR STORAGE are available. finding an alternative water and power source (Hetchy Hetchy also The SFPUC has consistently stated that voluntary agreements are the best path forward for the Bay-Delta, as the voluntary agreement strikes the right balance between environmental stewardship and water reliability. Commission. They are draining it currently so that it can serve as that overflow if needed given how much rain is coming down and expected over the next week. Thanks for putting this together. With how we can now basically pinpoint future precipitation amounts at least a month in advance, no reason to not let these reservoirs fill up past historic averages for this date. As the system aged, especially in an era of heightened safety awareness following the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989 and drought in the 1990s, it became evident that the system required a complete overhaul. I have wanted to do exactly this plot for years. They placed a few dissipators just before the river. Within San Francisco, we manage water distribution in the City. Its fluctuating between ~107% and ~20% from one hour to the next (reading 107.6 atm). There doesnt seem to be any site that shows the impact of each storm. In 2016, a Tuolumne County Superior Court judge dismissed the Heres an example of that data for Shasta, where you can see the daily inflows and outflows: Trailhead address: Evergreen Road (Hetch Hetchy Road), Yosemite National Park, CA 95321. I noticed that Folsom does not change whereas every reservoir changes on an hourly update. At the same time, theyve also said its critical to maintain sufficient water supplies to keep Bay Area communities and its economy running during a prolonged drought. The Mokolumne River, which originates in the high Sierra, provides more than 90 percent of the East Bay's water and the Owens Valley in the eastern Sierra serves as a key source of water for Los Angeles. Its water supply Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, in the Sierra Nevada is 80% full, the ground is saturated and near-record rainfall has occurred in recent days. Partly because of low water, the rivers chinook salmon runs have plummeted from tens of thousands of fish annually a few decades ago to fewer than 1,000 in recent years. A different story is unfolding at Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park, where water is being released to conserve and restore wildlife. Im curious: Lk Almanor is the 8th largest reservoir in CA. around the Bay Area rely on the Hetch Hetchy Regional Water Check out my **new combined California reservoir and snowpack visualizer** to compare to historical values, as well asthe California precipitation tracker and California snowpack visualizer. globe.height = globe.contentWindow.document.body.scrollHeight+40+"px"; Over the summer, Gov. Californias snowpack slips below average after dismally dry January, renewing concerns about drought, Busting water limits wont cost you in Marin County: Penalties canceled as rain fills reservoirs, California snowpack hits highest level this century for March. setTimeout(function (){ Lake ShastaLevel before the storm on Oct. 22: 882.57 feetLevel after the storm on Nov. 1: 885.47 feetTotal rise: 2.9 feet, Storage before the storm: 970,859 acre-feetStorage after the storm: 1,001,879 acre-feetTotal storage increase: 31,020 acre-feet, Lake OrovilleLevel before the storm: 630.80 feetLevel after the storm: 661.20 feetTotal rise: 30.4 feet, Storage before the storm: 799,638 acre-feetStorage after the storm: 982,263 acre-feetTotal storage increase: 182,625 acre-feet, Hetch HetchyLevel before the storm: 3,729.68 feetLevel after the storm: 3,750.99 feetTotal rise: 21.31 feet, Storage before the storm: 221,500 acre-feetStorage after the storm: 257,800 acre-feetTotal storage increase: 36,300 acre-feet, Trinity LakeLevel before the storm: 2,209.55 feetLevel after the storm: 2,213.22 feetTotal rise: 3.67 feet, Storage before the storm: 648,675 acre-feetStorage after the storm: 672,930 acre-feetTotal storage increase: 24,255 acre-feet, Folsom LakeLevel before the storm: 370.28 feetLevel after the storm: 390.33 feetTotal rise: 20.05 feet, Storage before the storm: 214,225 acre-feetStorage after the storm: 318,577 acre-feetTotal storage increase: 104,352 acre-feet, New Melones LakeLevel before the storm: 916.28 feetLevel after the storm: 917.09 feetTotal rise: 0.81 feet, Storage before the storm: 822,619 acre-feetStorage after the storm: 827,786 acre-feetTotal storage increase: 5,167 acre-feet, Don PedroLevel before the storm: 723.96 feetLevel after the storm: 727.41 feetTotal rise: 3.45 feet, Storage before the storm: 970,226 acre-feetStorage after the storm: 995,836 acre-feetTotal storage increase: 25,610 acre-feet, McClureLevel before the storm: 663.70 feetLevel after the storm: 672.27 feetTotal rise: 8.4 feet, Storage before the storm: 180,900 acre-feetStorage after the storm: 198,467 acre-feetTotal storage increase: 17,210 acre-feet. Ive been meaning to search for aquifer levels. Shasta, Oroville, Hetch Hetchy and many others were built by damming large rivers. According to the SFPUC, the upper reaches of the Tuolumne River have received about 36 inches of rain since the start of the water year in October, almost as much as what the area averages in a year. reservoir violates the California Constitution specifically the All of this work is nothing short of brilliant. Water data back to 1930 are available online. Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite was 69 percent full on Tuesday, 150 percent of normal for this time of year. "It's an increase of a few percent, . For most of the year it will still be possible to divert the flow of the Tuolumne River into the pipeline just downstream of the National Park boundary. The question was, what constitutes unreasonable method of Much of the recent inflow was to Hetch Hetchy, which can hold about 360,000 acre-feet of water and was 83% full at the start of the month. http://www.tuolumnerivermanagementplan.com. 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It takes a fair amount of work to make graphs compared to other more plug-and-play libraries but its very customizable, which is a plus. I would think with the rain it would get to historical average and then more outflow would happen. currently, there is a lot more water coming in than going out. . Central Valleyfarms have installed enough drip irrigationstrips to reach the moon and back, an improvement that also enables more efficient application of fertilizer and pesticides. The middle portion of the watershed from New Don Pedro Reservoir to above Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is characterized by deep canyons and forested terrain. The water transmission system in the Bay Area and Peninsula includes the Bay Division, San Andreas, Sunset Supply, and Crystal Springs pipelines. You can email her at agraff@sfgate.com. Then it has the appearance of something filling up, while still providing all the detail. March 12 - The Perks of California Native Wildflowers, March 28 - Rainwater Harvesting and Rain Gardens, April 01 - Lawn Conversion to Native and Drought-Tolerant Plants. If we reach 100% after the current rains and then it stops raining for the season, then our percentage will start going down. Maintaining this variety of sources is an important component of our near and long-term water supply management strategy. The SFPUC has voiced concerns with the Plan, as it would dramatically reduce the agencys water supply, leaving it subject to significant rationing in droughts and more extreme weather conditions brought on by climate change. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is involved in on-going negotiations with the State on a voluntary agreement for implementation of the Bay-Delta Plan, which calls for large increases in water releases on the tributaries to the San Joaquin River, a major tributary to the Bay-Delta. One of the big challenges in water management is controling the release. Privacy Policy | 2011-2021 San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. since it required flooding a The tremendous inflow to city reservoirs during the recent storms, mostly in and around Yosemite National Park, has lifted San Franciscos total water storage to near capacity. 1 kaf is the amount of water that would cover 1 acre in one thousand feet of water (or 1000 acres in water in 1 foot of water). Find out more about the system at http://www.sfwater.org, BAWSCA Board Policy Committee Meeting, April 12, 2023 1:30pm. McClintock bill proposes to improve public access at Hetch Hetchy. The snowpack there, which will eventually melt and flow into reservoirs, is already bigger than the average peak snowpack, which typically comes around April 1. Best of luck out there in California! Our reservoirs were alarmingly low. A separate vote would have been Restore Hetch Hetchy intends to undo this Great American mistake, and return the valley to Yosemite National Park and all people.