Dear Russian River Supporter
Water, here and there and now you see it and now you don’t….
Critical water shortage alerts have bombarded us in the media lately. The County Water Agency misses no opportunity to alert everyone to the critical need for stringent conservation. They will soon request the State Water Board to declare a temporary state of emergency that would allow the Agency to limit lower river flows to as little as 35 cubic feet per second, (normally at least 125) for the coming summer. Those flows would put an end to recreation this year and significant environmental harm could occur. There will be a big meeting on this topic the day after we have to print this mailer.
We can almost predict what will happen, however. The Agency will show up with about 8-10 staff people and lots of maps and graphs showing how low Lake Mendocino is and how they don’t have enough water to get through the season even as they release way more than needs to be used at this time, trying to make the point that they are being forced to waste water now against their will in order to meet minimum flows! They will tell us that PG&E has cut diversions from the Eel River by 33% and the current means for determining minimum flows needs to be changed. Some cut back in flows may be warranted, but not to the critical dry levels of 35-50 cubic feet per second (cfs) that they intend to request. RRWPC believes that 100 cfs would be much more appropriate.