She is a University of Washington graduate. A diverse mix of sources protects us from potential disruptions due to emergencies or natural disasters, provides resiliency during periods of drought, and helps us ensure a long-term, sustainable water supply as we address issues such as climate uncertainty, regulatory changes and population growth. Copyright 2023Water Education Foundation. As the system aged, especially in an era of heightened safety awareness following the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989 and drought in the 1990s, it became evident that the system required a complete overhaul. Thanks. The amount stored is increasing, just not by a lot. The Bay Area's main reservoir is up 21 feet. 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. Email: kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com, Yoohyun.Jung@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KellieHwang, @yoohyun_jung. The maximum that the city has put away is 570,000 acre-feet of water. Diamond Valley Lake is a man-made storage reservoir for storing imported water only. Current conditions of LAKE OR RESERVOIR WATER SURFACE ELEVATION ABOVE NGVD 1929 and RESERVOIR STORAGE are available. Hetch Hetchy today | Restore Hetch Hetchy Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park is seen in 2022. How much NorCal reservoirs shot up a week after big storm - SFGATE The reservoir was at 75 percent capacity as of May 5, totaling 269,963 acre-feet of water (an acre-foot is nearly 326,000 gallons). It looks like the red and blue lines are backwards on Folsom. 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. There is something strange about the data over the last two days (Jan.17 to Jan. 19): It has no natural inflow or out flow. LK ELEANOR NR HETCH HETCHY CA - USGS Water Data for the Nation Its not possible to see or really interact with the tiniest slivers. Together, the BAWSCA agencies account for two-thirds of water consumption from the system and pay for two-thirds of its upkeep. GNSS2 - Level 2 Quality Survey Grade Global Navigation Satellite System. This would allow us to see important, but noise-level reservoirs like hetch hetchy. Why We Need Hetch Hetchy More Than Ever | SPUR Saved to my favorites now. 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. Amy Graff is the news editor for SFGATE. Yoohyun Jung is the Deputy Data Editor for The San Francisco Chronicle. This November, a group of environmental advocates will put forth a ballot measure that would require the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to develop a plan to drain Hetch Hetchy. It is also the amount of water in a cube that is 352 feet per side (about the length of a football field). And more work is underway. The construction of the Hetch Hetchy Railroad took place from 1915 to 1918. The question was, what constitutes unreasonable method of A truly excellent project. pertained to water that was wasted, and there was no claim that 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. proposed as a source of water following the 1906 San Francisco Bay Area: Do You Know Where Your Water Comes From? This dashboard provides a bit more detail on the state of each of the reservoirs while also showing an aggregate total. In whats known as the Bay-Delta Plan, state water regulators are amid a years-long effort to negotiate a policy for how much water should be kept in rivers that flow to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to meet the needs of both people and wildlife. A Map and Guide to Hetch Hetchy Reservoir at Yosemite - TripSavvy http://www.tuolumnerivermanagementplan.com. **new combined California reservoir and snowpack visualizer**, made a bar graph showing the overall level of water in the major California reservoirs, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) Data Exchange Center. Excellent graphic! Restore Hetch Hetchys subsequent appeal to the ruling was Thanks for the link. Hetchy refers to a valley in the Sierra Nevada and a reservoir that One gauge in the area has measured 6.12 inches since Oct. 1, which is 899% of normal. Major snowstorm might leave you stranded, New 101 express lanes opens in Bay Area. "Some weather monitoring stations in the Feather River drainage received as much as 12 to 19 inches during the period of the storms," the department said. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander. Greetings from Mount Laurel New Jersey. I would like to make one small suggestion:. Whats going on with the water level at Oroville? O'Shaughnessy Dam was built on the Tuolumne River in 1923 to create Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Twenty of San Begin at O'Shaughnessy Dam. Restore Hetch Hetchy. drained by the Tuolumne San Franciscos water system, which includes Hetchy Hetchy, is expected to fill this winter for the first time since 2019. Lake Shasta, the state's largest reservoir, rose 2.9 feet and added 31,020 acre-feet of water. BAWSCA agencies advocated for the capital improvement program that was adopted by the SFPUC in 2002, and are actively monitoring its implementation. Thats a very poor design. It was the only tool that I could find that would allow me to make a vertical marimekko graph. Different presidential administrations also have tried to address Hetch Hetchy is only one of nine reservoirs in the San Francisco Public Utility Commission's water system. Important Legacy real-time page. An official website of the United States government. }, false); Lake Tahoe really isnt part of California water, as the outflow goes to Nevada. Hetch Hetchy water travels 160 miles via gravity from Yosemite to the San Francisco Bay Area. Units are in kaf, thousands of acre feet. Hoping they start building more reservoirs soon. Current conditions of LAKE OR RESERVOIR WATER SURFACE ELEVATION ABOVE NGVD 1929 and RESERVOIR STORAGE are available. A wet December produced ample snowfall, which is still sitting at high elevations. From the main road, it's about a 20- to 25-minute drive to the parking area. Its currently listed on this page as 29kaf full, but the usgs.gov page below says Hetch Hetchy is at 299.7kaf full. ) or https:// means youve safely connected to the .gov website. I hear from the farmers that we waste 80% of the water by flushing it into the ocean. I also hear the environmentalists say, the streams and wildlife need water, so flush it into the ocean. Its an interesting dilemma. The main goal of this visualization is to provide a quick overview of the status of the main reservoirs in the state and how they compare to historical levels. I recently joined the team with Restore Hetch Hetchy as Engagement & Development Director. } This other page: This website along with another shows that Eastmans level is still rising even though we have not had rain in more than a week. The source water from SFPUC is typically from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. . So my question is, How do we know if we are saving the water for later release (late summer) or are we releasing it to the ocean? I live close to Eastman Lake. The Bay Area transmission system also includes Irvington Tunnel 1 and Tunnel 2, the Bay Tunnel, and the Crystal Springs Bypass Tunnel. Similar findings are described in theUC Davis studyRe-Assembling Hetch HetchyandUS Bureau of Reclamation study. And while one storm didn't come close to ending the drought, some reservoirs in Northern California, especially those that fell right in the path of the storm, saw significant gains. Arg. Construction of the regional water system proceeded over the following 20 years, with water first delivered in 1934. The Water Education Foundation is a nonprofit, tax-exempt, The north (side of the reservoir) usually has two waterfalls going at the best of times, but youll see up and down the canyon walls, if you look close, you count there are about 12 waterfalls running now, said Steve Ritchie, the SFPUCs assistant general manager of water enterprise, during a recent drought report to the agencys governing board. An improvement: Could you include a bar for Last year at this date? "Soils that have become hydrophobic due to wildfire can also contribute to increased runoff because the water is less able to penetrate the burned soil," the department said. And the current water storage amounts are well below the historical averages for this time of year. Water data back to 1956 are available online. Sierra Nevada - Water Education Foundation Waterfalls gushed at Hetch Hetchy after an atmospheric river event in October 2021. over the past few days. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Nate, thanks for the insight. Hetch Hetchy Regional Water System The Hetch Hetchy watershed, an area located in Yosemite National Park, is the major source of water for all of San Francisco's water needs. These sources include surface water stored in reservoirs located in the Sierra Nevada, Alameda County and San Mateo County, and groundwater supplies stored in a deep aquifer located in San Francisco and San Mateo counties. 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. One acre-foot is the equivalent of one acre of land covered in one foot of water. Official websites use .gov . If you are reading this, its probably the winter rainy season in California again, and time to check on the status of the water in the California reservoirs. window.addEventListener("orientationchange", function() { Hetch Hetchy is Monitoring location 11275500. The blue line indicates the reservoirs water level one year ago today. Is that a good thing? At the same time, theyve also said its critical to maintain sufficient water supplies to keep Bay Area communities and its economy running during a prolonged drought. Water System | SFPUC Great URL. Copyright Barry Rokeach, 2014. The Hetch Hetchy Valley today with the dam seen in the lower right. Hours: Year-round, but only accessible by car when the Hetch Hetchy Road is open. O'Shaughnessy Dam is a 430-foot (131 m) high concrete arch-gravity dam in Tuolumne County, California, United States.It impounds the Tuolumne River, forming the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir at the lower end of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, about 160 miles (260 km) east of San Francisco. The judge also noted the provision of the state 2151 River Plaza Drive, Suite 205 Python is used to extract the data from this page hourly and wrangle the data in to a clean format. 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? Your email address will not be published. No it is correct. That said, most of its outflow makes its way down Feather River (via Rock Creek Reservoir) and ultimately into Orville. In Yosemite National Park, the Hetch Hetchy reservoir relies. There are no alerts at this time. YTD values are from January 1 . Occasionally the source water will shift to local reservoirs during routine maintenance to the conveyance system. As of Feb. 1, the systems total water storage was just over 1.3 million acre-feet, or about 92% of capacity. Part of the lake is on the California side, but it has zero California water impact beyond the immediate Tahoe residents. Weve been at zero now for several weeks, and we really want to see that turn around., Kellie Hwang and Yoohyun Jung are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. reserved. What's taking so long to build a California reservoir? - CalMatters Lake Shasta and Mendocino are also well below average. I have to agree with many people here what a great job making such a clear graph of whats happening. Is it because the laws have changed on how much each reservoir can hold or is it in anticipation of significantly more rain? You dont see runoff right away, the snow is still up there, frozen, doing what we want it to do, he said. The OShaughnessy Dam, which was completed in 1938 and is 430-feet tall, impounds water in Hetch Hetchy Reservoir for communities in the Bay Area. lawsuit, saying Restore Hetch Hetchys arguments were preempted Instructions: around the Bay Area rely on the Hetch Hetchy Regional Water 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. Omar, Thanks! Wapama Falls Trail | Yosemite National Park | Hikespeak.com 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. 1 covering up to $875 million and much of the rest coming from federal loans to water suppliers. A separate vote would have been For the first week of February, there was a slight increase for most reservoirs from January amounts. As of 5pm on 1/18, the data appears correct (~58k acre feet), but an hour ago it was reading off the chart (3X above what they are allowed to store right now). But tearing down O'Shaughnessy Dam in order to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley would be a disaster. A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the The SFPUC has voiced concerns with the Plan, as it would dramatically reduce the agencys water supply, leaving it subject to significant rationing in droughts and more extreme weather conditions brought on by climate change. With how we can now basically pinpoint future precipitation amounts at least a month in advance, no reason to not let these reservoirs fill up past historic averages for this date. 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. The upcountry portion of the System begins with Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park. Water Quality Updates | Water Resources Thank you so much for the hard work! Trinity Lake, with a capacity of 2,447,650 acre-feet, had the smallest increase, from 29% in December to 30% in January. Very nice work. Monitoring location 11275500 is associated with a LAKE, RESERVOIR, IMPOUNDMENT in TUOLUMNE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. Here's what that means. Congress had to approve the project because it was Isabella is filling quite slowly in order to test out the new $500 million spillway. Lock Thanks for developing it, and for sharing it with the rest of us! Restore Hetch Hetchy supports a power replacement plan that is truly renewable, and will not increase emissions of any pollutants or carbon that causes global warming. Long-term values for reservoir inflows use maximum number of complete water years in record. it will be cool if there is a way to track the change since Dec or some such date. The SFPUC has also raised concerns over the fishery benefits of the States Plan. use must be reasonable.. Climbers Timmy O'Neill (left) and Lucho Rivera atop a wall overlooking Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Shasta is the reservoir with the largest capacity and so it is the tallest row. 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. provides water to 2.7 million residents and businesses in the San Are they releasing water to relieve the pressure in anticipation of more water? San Franciscos Hetch Hetchy water system is almost full for the first time in years. For each of the top 8 reservoirs the storage has increased by a total of 217 kaf, however). In addition, San Francisco receives approximately one-tenth of its power from hydroelectricity generated by the gravity-driven flow from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. Thanks for the prompt reply! The regional water system provides water to 2.4 million people in San Francisco, Santa Clara, Alameda and San Mateo counties. Visualization was done in javascript and specifically the D3.js visualization library. Our drinking water comes from a variety of protected sources carefully managed by the SFPUC. Echoing the sentiments of famed naturalist John Muir, members say the glacially-carved Hetch Hetchy Valley that the reservoir sits in is comparable in grandeur to Yosemite Valley and should not be flooded. The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir that supplies San Francisco, seen here in February, is among those that have refilled after two months of storms. San Francisco will be in great shape going into 2023, said Spreck Rosekrans, executive director of Restore Hetch Hetchy Its unfortunate that too little is being done with these flows to recharge groundwater basins to help cities and farms and even restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley., Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. California drought: 2 reservoirs near Hetch Hetchy tapped - SFGATE reloadiframes(); Cherry Lk Nr Hetch Hetchy Ca | California Reservoir Levels - SNOFLO Article X, Section 2 that requires diversions for all water SF's Hetch Hetchy water system is almost full. Is that a good thing?
hetch hetchy reservoir level percentage
