Dear Deeply Readers,

Welcome to the archives of Water Deeply. While we paused regular publication of the site on November 1, 2018, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on water resilience. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors and contributors.

We continue to produce events and special projects while we explore where the on-site journalism goes next. If you’d like to reach us with feedback or ideas for collaboration you can do so at [email protected].

The Barge That Saved Folsom: Emergency Pumps Will Tap Shrinking Reservoir

SACRAMENTO BEE: Officials hope they won’t need it, but this $3.5 million project could be a last resort for 60,000 people.

Written by Phillip Reese Published on Read time Approx. 3 minutes

As water regulators continue to rapidly drain Folsom Lake to bolster supplies downstream, crews have begun construction of a floating barge that could keep water flowing to the city of Folsom this fall.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the reservoir, has allowed roughly 42 billion gallons to flow from Folsom Lake in the last 30 days. The lake now stands at its third-lowest point for this time of year in at least 40 years. At current outflows, Folsom Lake would reach record-low depths within weeks.

Local water agencies take water from Folsom Lake through huge intake valves well below the surface. The fear is that the reservoir level would drop to the point where the intakes would not function properly.

Several Sacramento suburbs, including Folsom, rely primarily on Folsom Lake for their water supply. In recent months, the Bureau of Reclamation has sharply decreased flows out of Lake Shasta and increased flows out of Folsom Lake to protect fish and maintain the right amount of salinity in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The $3.5 million barge under construction would pump drinking water to more than 60,000 people in the city of Folsom and the nearby state prison complex should the lake’s water line drop below 330 feet above sea level.

As of Thursday, the lake level was at 376 feet. In the last four weeks, the lake has lost about three feet of depth every four days.

“Our goal is to never have to need (the barge),” said Erin Curtis, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation. “But we don’t have total control over that.”

Federal officials say they felt it necessary to start building the barge as a precaution, even though they don’t think the lake will drop to levels that would require its use.

When it’s finished, the barge will float on Folsom’s side of the reservoir near the dam. It will consist of five floating platforms, each the size of a car, housing two submersible pumps. The pumps would funnel water through massive pipes along the top of Folsom Dam, which would feed directly into the city’s intake system. The hope is to have the setup ready by October 1.

“We don’t want that to be operational,” said Marcus Yasutake, the city’s environmental and water resources director. “But we understand that’s the planning that Reclamation needs to do.”

Three cities and water districts serving more than 200,000 people rely on Folsom Lake for drinking water. Along with Folsom, they include the city of Roseville and the San Juan Water District, which serves Granite Bay and sells water to Fair Oaks, Citrus Heights and Orangevale.

To lessen their dependence on the shrinking reservoir, the region’s utility managers have been aggressively entering into water-sharing agreements or have beefed up groundwater supplies. Curtis said existing infrastructure should be adequate to supply Roseville and the San Juan district this summer and fall.

Shane Hunt, a Bureau of Reclamation special projects manager, said the barge project is smaller than one discussed earlier this year that would have served a larger segment of the Sacramento region’s urban water users if lake levels plummeted as low as originally feared.

Hunt said a larger barge or some other mechanism would be needed next spring only in the event that “it’s really, really, really dry, and Folsom levels don’t come back up this winter.”

As of Thursday (August 13), there were about 242,000 acre-feet of water in Folsom Lake. Officials hope to keep the reservoir from dropping below 120,000 acre-feet later this year. The lake has never fallen below 140,000 acre-feet, according to state records starting in 1976.

Hunt said that, thanks to reduced agricultural demand, Folsom Dam managers are beginning to ease off releases. In mid-July, the lake was losing 5,000 to 6,000 acre-feet of water each day. This month, that was lowered to 3,000 to 4,000 acre-feet per day.

In the fourth straight year of drought, water managers have leaned heavily on Folsom as well as the state-operated Lake Oroville on the Feather River. More water has been kept in Lake Shasta, the state’s largest reservoir, to preserve cold water for endangered salmon.

This story originally appeared in the Sacramento Bee on August 14, 2015. To see more stories in the Bee’s ongoing coverage of the California drought, click here.

Photo courtesy by US Bureau of Reclamation

Suggest your story or issue.

Send

Share Your Story.

Have a story idea? Interested in adding your voice to our growing community?

Learn more
× Dismiss
We have updated our Privacy Policy with a few important changes specific to General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and our use of cookies. If you continue to use this site, you consent to our use of cookies. Read our full Privacy Policy here.