Bay Area Water District Managers on Contending with Drought and Deluge

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It might be hard to visualize at the moment, but not long ago we were in a severe water emergency. Marin county asked for 40% cuts in usage and planned for an emergency pipeline to bring in water from the East Bay over the Richmond bridge. Now, many reservoirs are overflowing and water managers are releasing water to avoid floods when the massive Sierra snowpack melts. Forum talks with water managers from three Bay Area districts about how their systems are handling the whiplash. How much of this water are they able to store? How does moving from too dry to too wet change the way they manage their systems? And what are they asking of customers? As we look toward a future of more extreme weather, we talk about how the Bay Area’s waterworks will have to adjust. Guests: Aaron Baker, chief operating officer, Water Utility Division, Valley Water Ben Horenstein, general manager, Marin Municipal Water District Mike Tognolini, director of water and natural resources, East Bay Municipal Utility District Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:57.7	From KQED.
1:14.6	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. Boy, it may be hard to remember right at the moment, but not long ago we were in a severe water emergency.
1:20.6	Drought was forcing major water restrictions and leading Moran, for example, to consider running a pipe across the Richmond-Sanraffel Bridge.
1:28.3	Now, after all these atmospheric rivers, some reservoirs are overflowing and water managers
1:33.8	are releasing water to prepare for when the massive Sierra snowpack melts.
1:38.0	So today, we talk with water managers from three Bay Area districts about how their systems
1:43.2	are handling the whiplash.
1:45.0	How much of this water are they able to keep?
1:47.0	And what does this year teach us about how to manage water in our changing climate?
1:51.0	That's all coming up next after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Water districts are complex unique entities. Each of them
2:08.6	has evolved in place a species molded by into its environment. So up in Marin, they rely on surface
2:15.3	reservoirs and some Sonoma water from the Russian River.
	...

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