I wonder why it doesnt work for you. 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). I second that request. Congressman Tom McClintock has re-introduced theYosemite National Park Equal Access and Fairness Act, a bill that would allow non-motorized Sign up to receive blog posts and other news by email. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander. While the rainfall has been bad for many people, I am happy to see Californias reservoirs are benefiting slightly, Amen! We provide water directly to customers in San Francisco and wholesale through 26 Water agencies in Alameda, Santa Clara, and San Mateo counties. Privacy Policy | 2011-2021 San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Your tools are awesome just hurts when you receive bad data at times! That includes the Tuolumne River, which provides water via Hetch Hetchy Reservoir to Bay Area customers. It updates hourly using data from the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) website, giving an up-to-date picture of California reservoir levels. ) or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. Units are in kaf, thousands of acre feet. . You dont see runoff right away, the snow is still up there, frozen, doing what we want it to do, he said. A lock ( California reservoir levels: . You can sort the mekko graph by size largest at the top to smallest at the bottom or by reservoir location, from north to south. the map graph doesnt include berryessa. His recent work has examined the impacts of drought, threats to public lands and wildlife, and the nation's widening rural-urban divide. The 1913 Raker Act authorized the unprecedented dam inside the park and also set the fee that the city pays to rent the entire valley in which the dam sits: $30,000 per year. This is also affected by most of these dams multi-purpose nature where they are near constantly releasing for power(like Shasta) or to make room for flood control capacity(like Folsom). A 1 week change would be interesting to show on each. Commission. I have to agree with many people here what a great job making such a clear graph of whats happening. That said, most of its outflow makes its way down Feather River (via Rock Creek Reservoir) and ultimately into Orville. This dashboard is great! The average for this time of year is approximately 4,659.57ft, plus or minus 39ft. All rights reserved. Just a wistful thought, it would be really cool to graph the water release statistics. Assistant General Manager for Water Steven Ritchie credits the way the system is managed along with lower. Reservoir behind OShaughnessy Dam does not require filtration. It didnt end the drought, but it was definitely really good," said Ritchie. Is it because the laws have changed on how much each reservoir can hold or is it in anticipation of significantly more rain? Restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley will allow all three power plants to remain operational but will reduce power generation at these by about 20% an average of about 350 million kWh per year. Francisco Public Utilities Commissions 26 wholesale customers Excellent graphic! Voters rejected a 2012 . Locked padlock . They placed a few dissipators just before the river. All Rights Reserved. It could be the 180% of historical average of snowpack, which will be melting in a couple months. Read more about the data team and their work. Email: kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com, Yoohyun.Jung@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KellieHwang, @yoohyun_jung. function resizeframe(){ 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 dry January with little rainfall across much of Northern California actually didnt hurt the states water storage levels, according to data from the California Department of Water Resources. If a reservoir gets filled to 100% and more, the dam will break and many cities will get flooded, so the operators are careful. 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. Thinking more about it. The adopted Plan addresses water quality issues affecting the ecosystem and fisheries of the Bay-Delta system. Jeff, the average changes daily as well. thanks. 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. 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. Greetings from Mount Laurel New Jersey. The height of the row indicates how much water the reservoir could hold. Ive added it to my bookmarks for quick reference. Sierra Club unsuccessfully fought the reservoirs establishment Trailhead coordinates: 37.946905, -119.787376 (37 56 48.85N 119 47 14.55W) 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. The construction of the Hetch Hetchy Railroad took place from 1915 to 1918. So they should be saving much more and deal with the .000001 of risk later. administration attempted to allocate funds to study removing the An official website of the United States government. Its promising, but too early to let our guard down, said Joseph Sweiss, spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the citys water purveyor, in an email to The Chronicle. It looks like the red and blue lines are backwards on Folsom. Spring snowmelt runs down the Tuolumne River and fills Hetch Hetchy, the largest reservoir in our water system. Together, the BAWSCA agencies account for two-thirds of water consumption from the system and pay for two-thirds of its upkeep. P.S. A different story is unfolding at Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park, where water is being released to conserve and restore wildlife. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Thats just another very strong indication visually that its a big water year.. scenic mountain valley in a national park. It allowed the water over the spillway to move too fast creating a vacuum between the water and the concrete that pulled the concrete sections out of the spillway. 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. But they'll cost you, Fight at high school basketball game in S.F. She joined the Chronicle as a data reporter in 2021. I previously made a bar graph showing the overall level of water in the major California reservoirs. Python is used to extract the data from this page hourly and wrangle the data in to a clean format. While forecasters can predict the likelihood of future rainfall over large areas, they cant pinpoint it to the degree needed to determine whether a particular watershed/reservoir will overflow and cause damage and loss of life. Hetch Hetchy is Monitoring location 11275500. The OShaughnessy Dam i s 300 feet tall only medium-sized by todays standards. Curious why Shasta lake seems to be making big gains in water coming in and Trinity not so much? GNSS2 - Level 2 Quality Survey Grade Global Navigation Satellite System. Climbers Timmy O'Neill (left) and Lucho Rivera atop a wall overlooking Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. It can take several days to see the full impact on reservoirs as water continues to run through watersheds and into streams in the days after a storm. Owned by the city of San Francisco, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir 2022 All Rights Reserved. the Bay Area. For the higher elevations, more of their water comes directly from snowmelt. Why is it not listed? I would like to make one small suggestion:. 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. Fish and Wildlife Service that provides an immediate $4 million investment for habitat improvements for fisheries in the Tuolumne River. Exclusive: Stunning photos show Yosemite National Park under 15 feet of Warriors treating Andrew Wiggins with understandable patience, but his California snowpack hits highest level this century for March, could Map shows which parts of California exceeded entire years worth of rain, Map shows stunning improvement in California drought, Last chance to see: Bay Bridge lights turn off on Sunday. Hetch Hetchy is only one of nine reservoirs in the San Francisco Public Utility Commissions water system. 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 . 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, Going to Tahoe this weekend? For perspective, water demand across the SFPUC's service area of 2.7 million people was about 205,000 acre-feet last fiscal year. There is something strange about the data over the last two days (Jan.17 to Jan. 19): since it required flooding a Lock In 2016, a Tuolumne County Superior Court judge dismissed the the city wastes water, so it was a moot issue. Water data back to 1956 are available online. Major snowstorm might leave you stranded, New 101 express lanes opens in Bay Area. mobilewarn(); Why isnt Lake Sonoma included? mandate within Saved to my favorites now. their water supply would cost hundreds of millions of dollars at Your Privacy Choices (Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads). A separate vote would have been "It was a very healthy shot in the arm. Lock This dashboard provides a bit more detail on the state of each of the reservoirs while also showing an aggregate total. Absolutely zero reason to be releasing this much water from these reservoirs. All of this work is nothing short of brilliant. Great URL. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. https://engaging-data.com/ca-reservoir-level/ drained by the Tuolumne The maximum that the city has put away is 570,000 acre-feet of water. Official websites use .gov This is a marimekko (or mekko) graph which may take some time to understand if you arent used to seeing them. I live in the central valley. reservoir violates the California Constitution specifically the Although Hetch Hetchy Reservoir is the most well-known, it stores less than 25% of the system's water. The extensive amount of storage, which is designed to benefit the Bay Area as droughts become more severe with climate change, has become a sticking point in a longstanding environmental battle over how much water the city should be taking from rivers. Whats going on with the water level at Oroville? Data have been checked by the reporting agency. 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. San Francisco and the thousands of suburban . 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. There doesnt seem to be any site that shows the impact of each storm. Great visualization Chris! } Within San Francisco, we manage water distribution in the City. Thanks for providing it for public information. I believe the spillway was designed by the State. 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. Hetch Hetchy Regional Water System, which serves San Francisco, The trail takes you to the base of Wapama Falls, passing two smaller waterfalls (during spring) on the way. Charts from the California Department of Water Resources show conditions at key state reservoirs on Oct. 22 (left) and on Nov. 2 (right). 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. This hike follows the shoreline of the reservoir with moderate up and downhill hiking. She was born and raised in the Bay Area and got her start in news at the Daily Californian newspaper at UC Berkeley where she majored in English literature. But tearing down O'Shaughnessy Dam in order to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley would be a disaster. The information on Isabella has been fluctuating drastically (by a factor of 10!) Another not monitored by the State? Click here for the SFPUC's 2020State of the Regional Water System Report. The BAWSCA agencies are therefore key stakeholders in ensuring the system serves as a reliable source of high quality water. The citys water system also includes a water bank at Don Pedro Reservoir along the Tuolumne River, which was full as of Feb. 1. The Bay Area transmission system also includes Irvington Tunnel 1 and Tunnel 2, the Bay Tunnel, and the Crystal Springs Bypass Tunnel. resizeframe(); Eighty-five percent of the water comes from Sierra Nevada snowmelt stored in the Hetch Hetchy reservoir situated on the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park. 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. One of the most impressive was Hetch Hetchy, which provides drinking water to 2.6 million people in San Francisco and other Bay Area communities. setTimeout(function (){ This local water is captured in reservoirs located in San Mateo and Alameda counties. Thanks for the link. "It is unknown how much area of the Feather River and Shasta Lake drainages are impacted by hydrophobic soils.". The water is delivered by a gravity-based system and aqueduct to The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir that supplies San Francisco, seen here in February, is among those that have refilled after two months of storms. Kellie Hwang is the newsletter editor for The San Francisco Chronicle. Generation at the Kirkwood power plant would depend on the natural flow of the Tuolumne River, and would be significantly diminished during late summer and fall. and its snowmelt-fed water supply, water from Hetch Hetchy Copyright 2023Water Education Foundation. Could the reason be that the water from Lake Alma or seems to be used for energy generation, and that there does not seem to be any agricultural or urban use? Occasionally the source water will shift to local reservoirs during routine maintenance to the conveyance system.