It is a shame to see the amount of water being wasted, as Dan Walters writes in his Sacramento Bee column, when a more strategic California water policy could be saving it, as we posted before, dams are the solution; build Auburn—about which ARPPS published a new article in the Sacramento Press—and raise Shasta.
An excerpt from the Bee column.
“Those who really believe California has a water shortage should spend five minutes standing in Old Sacramento, watching the Sacramento River.
“Operators of the three major dams on the Sacramento and its tributaries – Shasta, Oroville and Folsom – have opened their gates widely, sending boiling torrents of water downstream. They must draw down reservoirs behind the dams to control anticipated runoff from one of the heaviest mountain snowpacks on record.
“A week ago, Sacramento River flows hit 90,000 cubic feet per second, even with diversions into bypass channels. But on Friday, the flow was about 75,000 cfs, which meant that someone watching the river for five minutes at Old Sacramento would see nearly 170 million gallons of water – enough flow to fill an empty Folsom Lake in less than a week.
“Let's put that in another context. The difference between California's having an adequate water supply and an inadequate supply is roughly 3 million acre-feet of water a year. That's the equivalent of just 20 days of current Sacramento River flow.”
