San Luis Reservoir near record lows at 11% capacity
With San Luis Reservoir reaching near record lows, south of Delta water contractors were warned yesterday that the federal share of water in San Luis Reservoir was nearly exhausted, and operations would be shut down at O’Niell Pumping Plant as soon as Saturday evening.
San Luis Reservoir is a joint federal and state reservoir that serves the State Water Project contractors and the federal contractors on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, as well as a providing a portion of water supplies for the Santa Clara Valley and San Benito County. While El Nino rains filled Northern California reservoirs, restrictions on the export pumps in the Delta prevented much of the water from flowing south and as a result, San Luis Reservoir was only half-full at its highest point this spring. Now, the 2 million acre-feet reservoir is sitting at just 11% of capacity – with a mere 226,265 acre-feet.
The shutdown would have ceased all deliveries to federal contractors that draw from the Delta Mendota Canal and the San Luis Canal, except for a minimal amount that would be available for M&I health and safety purposes and to the Exchange/Settlement Contractors.
However, the shutdown was averted by a complicated transfer involving a consolidated place of use petition, and a transfer of banked water from the state share of water to the federal share. (Read the letter here.) The transferred water – about 60,000 acre-feet – won’t last very long.
Slated to just receive a 5% allocation from the Central Valley Project, farmers south of Delta have been relying on transfers and groundwater to get by. With summer water operations continuing as per Reclamation’s plan, the situation for westside contractors remains bleak.
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