Sonoma County Board of Supervisors ends drought emergency

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has ended the local drought emergency it declared two years ago, but officials are encouraging residents to continue conserving water.

The board’s unanimous vote came Tuesday and accompanied a series of measures to continue the county’s water conservation and drought preparation efforts.

“The watershed is in a healthy place where we’re not seeing that immediate threat from the drought right now,” said Jeff DuVall, interim director of the county’s Department of Emergency Management. “But also knowing this could change depending on weather and climate change.”

Sonoma County has been clear of "abnormally dry" status since mid-March, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

DuVall credited the rainy winter that dropped more than three feet of rain on Santa Rosa in as many months with replenishing the region’s two main reservoirs — Lake Sonoma and Lake Mendocino. They had entered the rain year last fall at or near historic lows.

Earlier this year, dam managers at both sites made their first flood control releases in four years.

Now, Lake Mendocino sits at about 118% of capacity for this time of year. At this time last year, the reservoir it was at 59% of seasonal capacity, according to a county staff report.

Lake Sonoma, the larger of the two reservoirs, is at 104% of seasonal capacity. Last year at this time it was at 61%, according to the county.

The county also saw a boost from local water conservation efforts. Residents and businesses reduced water use by 17% in Sonoma and Marin counties in 2021 and 2022, compared to 2020 levels, DuVall said. Those efforts saved 9.2 billion gallons of water over the two-year period.

Local conservation efforts surpassed the 15% reduction target Gov. Gavin Newsom set for the state in 2021, according to a county news release.

Two years ago this week, Newsom stood on the dry bed of Lake Mendocino and proclaimed a local drought emergency in Mendocino and Sonoma counties, singling out the region for “acute and dramatic” water supply woes that worsened and spread statewide as the multiyear drought deepened.

Sonoma County supervisors followed Newsom a week later in 2021 with their own local drought emergency declaration, allowing the county to pursue emergency grants and initiatives protecting public health, property and the environment.

Cities across the region made similar moves, and those along the upper Russian River, where supplies were among the most strained, faced the sharpest mandated cuts in water use.

Most of those mandates have been rolled back as local cities end their drought emergencies.

The county touted its efforts to shore up water supplies during the crisis, highlighting the board’s allocation of $400,000 to revive three dormant wells on the Santa Rosa Plain, the creation of a regional task force to coordinate drought response efforts and the board’s authorization of $1.1 million to create a drought response and flood control plan in July 2022.

Though the drought emergency is now lifted, county officials plan to continue the work launched during the drought.

“The most important thing that we don’t want to do is lose that momentum and lose that collaboration,” DuVall said.

DuVall and Board of Supervisors Chair Chris Coursey urged residents and businesses to continue conservation efforts.

“We don’t know when the next drought will arrive,” Coursey said in a written statement. “If everyone does their part to conserve now, we will have more water available in the future for the entire community to share.”

Staff Writer Madison Smalstig contributed reporting.

You can reach Staff Writer Emma Murphy at 707-521-5228 or emma.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MurphReports.