Cities struggle as reservoirs dry up

The City of Calistoga has pumped the last drop of drinking water it can from its main reservoir. No rain this winter would mean no water at all from behind the Kimball Dam next summer.

"We're offline," Public Works Director Mike Kirn said last week. "We haven't been taking water from Kimball because it's so low since the middle of October."

The reservoir is down to just about 10 percent of its capacity. The City Council has been asking residents for voluntary restrictions on water use since September, and Kirn may ask for more stringent measures later this month.

Calistoga is one of several municipalities in the area struggling to keep small local water systems functioning in the wake of a record dry year across most of the state. The city of Willits has fewer than 100 days worth of supply and is considering mandatory restrictions. Cloverdale is scrambling to draft an ordinance allowing mandatory restrictions in case the Sonoma County Water Agency is forced to continue cutting flows into the Russian River to preserve dwindling supply in Lake Mendocino.

Water systems throughout Sonoma County are preparing to roll out a coordinated water conservation campaign this week, unheard of during the winter months, in an effort to stretch out supply in Lake Sonoma, which has only about a year's worth of water left before the agency would need to begin rationing.

But unlike water systems in Sonoma and Mendocino counties, Calistoga and the other water systems in Napa County have a lifeline: a tie in to the State Water Project, the vast network of reservoirs, pipelines and canals that supplies water to 25 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland.

A 26-mile pipeline connects to the project east of Fairfield and runs through the City of Napa system and provides water to Calistoga and St. Helena. It means that Napa Valley residents can be sure water will continue to flow even as the supply in their patchwork of local reservoirs dwindles.

"That's how I sleep at night," said Joy Eldredge, water general manager for the city of Napa. "We can withstand two or three years of drought based on our reserves -- that's what most agencies strive for."

Napa is entitled to almost 22,000 acre feet, or about 7.2 billion gallons, from the state every year. That, combined with water in Lake Hennessey and the smaller Milliken Reservoir, is more than sufficient to supply the city's needs, along with demand from St. Helena, which buys most of its water from Napa.

Likewise, in Calistoga, the city is entitled to 1,950 acre feet from the state, or 635 million gallons, to supplement the 300 acre feet usually contained behind the Kimball Dam.

That sounds reassuring, except that the State Water Project is under the same pressure as local reservoirs, with low rainfall for most of the past two years and an unusually poor snowpack on the mountains. Just on Friday, the Department of Water Resources announced that the snowpack is a mere 20 percent of normal for this time of year.

In November, the State Water Project said it would be able to deliver just 5 percent of what the water customers were entitled to in 2014, based on current conditions. Last year, the state delivered 35 percent.

Should it rain this winter and spring, the 5 percent estimate could go up, DWR spokeswoman Nancy Vogel said, but the signs so far are not promising.

That leaves Napa and Calistoga relying on what's known as "carryover," water it was entitled to buy from the state but did not in previous years. Napa has about 13,600 acre feet banked up and Calistoga has about 900. Vogel said all of that water is available to the cities on demand.

While officials in the two cities say they don't want to dip into that carryover reserve, it does provide them enough cushion to make it through 2014 even if no rain falls.

More serious, however, is the situation in Napa County's second-largest city, American Canyon. The 20,000 residents rely exclusively on State Water Project water.

In a normal year, the city uses 3,600 acre feet of water, but it is entitled to more than 5,200 from the state, plenty to meet demand. If the state's 5 percent prediction holds, however, the city would get just 260 acre feet from the state. The city's carryover reserve is only about 1,200 acre feet.

Altogether, the city should be able to cobble together about 1,974 acre feet of water from various sources under current conditions, well short of what the city needs, Public Works Director Jason Holley said.

Holley said he plans to discuss the options with the City Council later this month, including instituting mandatory conservation measures as the spring approaches or trying to buy excess water from other state water project customers.

He pointed out that the state estimates its supply very conservatively and the initial percentage is usually well below the actual amount the state can deliver. The initial estimate in 2010 also was 5 percent but the state delivered 50 percent. The last 100 percent year was 2006, though the state managed 80 percent in 2011.

"We have to be concerned but we have to let it play out," he said. "We've been here before. We have concerns but we're not losing sleep."

You can reach Staff Writer

Sean Scully at 521-5313 or sean.scully@pressdemocrat.com, and on Twitter @BeerCountry.