SANTA CRUZ – Santa Cruz water officials are optimistic about the city’s water reserves for the upcoming dry season.
A series of atmospheric river events in December brought significant rainfall to the region. Since the first atmospheric river in October, Santa Cruz has received 11.3 inches of rain in town and 32.5 inches at the Loch Lomond Reservoir, according to Water Department Deputy Director Chris Coburn.
The increased rainfall this wet season compared to the last could lead to city officials easing water restrictions during the summer months.
“Certainly, our position has improved greatly. We’re not there yet, but were feeling much better and hopeful that with normal rainfall next couple months well be able to lift restrictions and ideally see Loch Lomond fill before the end of the rainy season,” Coburn said. “It’s been a terrific December. Just really what I asked for, for Christmas.”
Santa Cruz City Council implemented Stage 1 water restrictions in April for the peak water usage season in 2021. That season is typically between the months of May and October and restrictions called for a 10% reduction of water usage citywide.
Santa Cruz has already seen double the runoff from the river than it saw all last year. In water year 2021, the city saw 16,461 acre-feet of runoff water. So far in water year 2022 the city has accumulated more than 33,000 acre-feet of runoff, Coburn noted.
An acre-foot of water is about 326,000 gallons, enough to supply two average households with water for a year.
However, the outlook wasn’t always this positive. Prior to Santa Cruz’s atmospheric river events, water officials had a much grimmer prediction for the city’s water supply. In fact, water levels were uncomfortably close to necessitating Stage 2 water restrictions for the city, Coburn noted.
At the start of the wet season, Loch Lomond had dwindled to 54% capacity, he said. The loch was 58% full when the city implemented Stage 1 water restrictions.
The Loch Lomond Reservoir is the city’s primary source of water when the river does not produce enough runoff. The river can’t produce runoff without rainfall.
“That was not comfortable for me,” Coburn said. “I think we were pretty close to looking at a higher level of restrictions.”
Since then, the loch has made a miraculous recovery. The initial atmospheric river only filled the reservoir to 55% capacity, but later storms have filled it to roughly 80%, according to Coburn.
Subsequent atmospheric river events became more effective at producing runoff and filling the reservoir because local water sheds were already saturated from previous storms, he added. A lot of water from October’s storm had to soak into the soil, while recent storms created more runoff to fill Loch Lomond.
Even if the city had needed to transition to Stage 2 water restriction, Coburn stated that would be difficult and costly for the city to achieve. Since residents in Santa Cruz are already conscious of water conservations practices, finding other ways to save water becomes difficult.
Essentially, ramping up conservation efforts would be more difficult because the easy fixes that are implemented during water restrictions are already done. This is in part to Santa Cruz having one of the lowest water use rates per capita in the country, according to Coburn.
At the conclusion of last year’s water restrictions, the city as a whole managed to reduce its water usage by 10%. Roughly 30% of the city’s single-family homes exceeded their allotments, which indicates that residents in multi-family developments were able to go beyond what was asked of them and single-family homes did not exceed their allotments by a significant margin.
“I think it would be really unlikely for us to have to go to a higher level of restriction at this point,” Coburn said. “Our customers do such a good job of conserving.”
The city isn’t quite in the spot to loosen restrictions just yet. Finishing the wet season strong would be the best way for the city work its way out of water restrictions for the next year.
That also puts the city in a good position. January and February are typically the wettest months of the year for Santa Cruz. On average, Santa Cruz sees about 6.1 inches of rain in January and about 5.3 inches of in February, according to National Weather Service data dating back to 1893.
“It looks like we’re going to have a couple weeks of dry weather, which probably some folks will appreciate,” Coburn said. “The conjecture that I’ve seen is returning to a wet period the third or fourth week of January. If that holds, that looks good for me. I’m hopeful.”
While the city is looking at reducing water restrictions for 2022, California recently adopted new restrictions, even while the drought wanes across the state.
State restrictions are fairly short reaching, however. The mandate only governs outdoor water use, barring residents from watering their lawns within 48 after a rainstorm or allowing sprinklers to run onto the sidewalk. Violation of this mandate could result in a $500 fine.
That regulation still applies to Santa Cruz, despite its independent water resources. However, Coburn does not believe it will have a large impact on Santa Cruz residents since water conservation is already widely practiced within the city.
Santa Cruz is also set to implement measures that will mitigate the impacts of dry years in the future. The city expects to begin its aquifer storage and recovery program Monday.
That program will allow the city to store water underground for later use. The city will be able to store that water during times when river runoff is abundant and use it during critically dry years as an additional water source.
“The aquifer storage and recovery should provide us with the water that we would need to carry us through the dry periods that we don’t currently have now,” Coburn said.
Source: www.mercurynews.com