While it seems clear that the city of Ukiah will have enough water to meet the needs of it residents, businesses and facilities this drought year, it is not clear yet if it will have enough water to share with neighboring communities that have far less of the resource available.
“The drought situation continues to stay, I would say, severe, in particular for folks that reliant on Lake Mendocino,” Sean White, director of water and sewer resources, told the Ukiah City Council at its May 5 meeting. “I was actually in a meeting today where we got a fresh look at the latest model runs showing reservoir volumes at the end of the season, and I definitely think (Lake Mendocino) is going to be the lowest we’ve ever seen it.”
Depending on demand reduction and any changes to the required releases to maintain flows in the Russian River, White said the lake, which can hold about 120,000 acre feet of water, “is going to be down to somewhere between 9,000 and 20,000 acre feet of storage, with 20,000 being sort of a lofty goal at this point.”
White said he has been meeting with local groups to try and “figure out the best way to navigate this situation,” describing the city as “in a good spot in terms of meeting our own supply demands. We can rely primarily on ground water through this situation, and I think we’re fine, our aquifer levels are absolutely normal right now, and our facilities are getting prepped.
“I think the real issue for us is going to be can we, and how can we, help our neighbors in a less fortunate position,” White continued, explaining that the answer will “depend on how the state reacts to this. The pot of water that would be most shareable for us would be our pre-14 right,” which he described as normally “curtailment-proof, but with (California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s emergency drought declaration), that’s not really the case anymore. So it will really depend on how the state reacts (to the drought) and whether or not that right is curtailed or left intact, because that will dictate how much help we can give our neighbors.”
White said he met Wednesday morning with representatives from the Mendocino County Farm Bureau, the Russian River Flood Control and Water Resource Conservation District, Willow County Water District and Millview County Water District to discuss “what’s the best way for the overall community to share that resource.”
As to water rights overall, White said “I think this (drought) event is something that will define a lot of things. One of the things that we talked about this morning was that it’s important for the overall community to protect that pre-14 right for this exact reason: (when water resources get so low) it’s very important to keep one durable, reasonably sized right intact here in this valley for people of this community.
“So we’ve got a hand of cards, and for others in the community they’re not very good cards, and we’re really going to spend a lot of time figuring out just how to play those cards so those folks get through this in one piece,” White said.