Storms Highlight State's Lack of Water Management

rainy events like this winter. The experts are still predicting we are in a drought even with the change from La Nina to El Nino and, to be sure, expect building new reservoirs will once again be out of thought, which is the norm, during dry years.

There needs to be more planning to divert more of this excess water to areas where can it be held, like large farming and mitigation level tracts, so it can percolate into the ground and fill underground aquifers. That is where it belongs, especially for farmers and rural water districts. At one time, much of the Central Valley was one big lake. Drinking water quality is a problem from heavy downpours with all the chemicals from land uses, oils from roads and highways, and often municipal sewage overflows into rivers, creeks, oceans, and reservoirs big and small with many other pollutants. One really good thing about heavy rain, it flushes out the root zone of salts in vineyards and farm fields built up from irrigation water and fertilization, giving farmers a new palate to begin the year. Watch for the vigor in your garden and the grasses on the hillsides.

A major touchy and difficult problem is that flood control managers play a dicey game of managing reservoir output by having to guess what is going to happen next. This rainy season is definitely keeping them up at night. Early fall computers failed miserably to predict all this historic rainfall which dam managers need to determine how much releases are neces- sary to be ready for the snow runoff, which is what makes up much of the storage water in the dams. Computers in the 1970s were not anywhere sophisticated as now but were predicting we would be in an Ice Age by now. The new modern computers that missed these recent atmospheric river events, right under our noses, are the same ones predicting Armageddon this century if we don’t drastically change our way of living. Makes you kind of wonder how reliable they are. Reminds me of the old saying back when computers were first showing up: “Garbage in, Garbage out.”

With these warm Pineapple Expresses, we get a lot of water quickly, and it doesn’t form a snowpack at the lower elevations; therefore, the reservoirs fill up quickly. So, water has to be dumped from the dams preparing for the snow melt, while at the same time, the rivers are flowing high, adding pressure to levees and holding basins further down the line. Then when dumping into the ocean and meeting a king tide, like here recently, it backs up causing flooding up the line, because it has nowhere to go but up.

An energy note: Now here is one I really like and happens to involve a close family friend, Daniel Emmett. One of Daniel’s twin’s godfathers is our son, Patrick. After a destination wedding in Italy, we hosted a California reception at our renovated Schoolhouse Tasting Room, now happy to see back as a school — Little Sprouts Day Care. He is the chief executive of Net Energy Technologies, which has developed solar-panel windows that include layers of transparent photovoltaic cells between the panes of glass that turns sunlight into electricity through cables to charging stations. These solar-panel windows also capture infrared light, keeping rooms cooler and reducing air conditing costs.

Proponents say the building would be able to provide far more power than roof installations. Patagonia, the outdoor-indoor clothing retailer, is testing 22 windows at their California headquarters in Ventura that will power the employees’ cell phones. The test will help determine cost benefits with the hopes that this technology will become an important device to make buildings greener and provide solar energy for themselves and perhaps their neighbors. This information was gleaned from a Wall Street Journal article by Konrad Putzier.