Hedging against the risk of a third dry year in 2009, state officials on Thursday unveiled a "drought water bank" to help thirsty cities and farms cope.
The water bank, managed by the Department of Water Resources, will be prepared to move as much as 600,000 acre-feet of water from willing sellers in the north to buyers in the south.
That's enough to serve more than 1.2 million homes for a year – if used carefully.
DWR officials cautioned the outlook for this winter isn't uplifting. Though still early for such predictions, long-range forecasts based on computer modeling hold no hint of a break from the drought.
Even an average winter will not refill the state's depleted reservoirs to normal levels.
Lake Oroville, California's second-largest reservoir, is at just 32 percent capacity. That is its lowest point since the drought in 1977, a record that may be broken as the level continues dropping daily.
"We would be negligent if we didn't prepare for the worst," DWR Director Lester Snow said.
The water bank is the first established by the state since the last major statewide drought, in 1991.
The bank will comply with state and federal environmental laws, Snow said. It will be governed by an environmental impact study already in place for an existing state-federal water transfer program.
Typically, water will be sold by farmers in the Sacramento Valley who can create a surplus, whether by idling crops or using groundwater instead of surface water. Prices will be established by the open market, but DWR will collect a charge for the cost of pumping the water to its destination.
The agency will also rank buyers according to need. Cities with water-related health and safety problems will get first dibs, with farm crops a lower priority. To qualify, urban buyers must have a conservation program adopted to cut normal water use by 20 percent.
As Snow put it, "we don't want farmers selling water so people can hose off their sidewalks."
The program, however, depends on the ability to pump water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the hub of the state's water system, where DWR and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation operate diversion pumps and canals.
Their operations are already limited by environmental concerns in the Delta, where the massive pumps alter water flows and kill millions of fish.
Assuming the water bank becomes necessary next year, DWR will look for safe "windows" within the multitude of environmental factors governing the Delta in which to move the water.
That will be challenging.
"If we get average precipitation next year, we may not be able to move even all of our own (existing) water," said Jerry Johns, DWR deputy director.
For more information, visit www.water.ca.gov/drought/.
Call The Bee's Matt Weiser, (916) 321-1264.
