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North Bay Cities Implement Drought Restrictions and Plan for the Future

Apr 26, 2022

North Bay Cities Implement Drought Restrictions and Plan for the Future

The ground was wet from a light rain on a recent afternoon drive through Dry Creek Valley below Lake Sonoma. Passing the endless rows of green vineyards that cloak the valley, it appeared as though water was plentiful here.

However, this is not so. Pulling up to a look-out beside Lake Sonoma, the water sat 30 feet below the tree line, a stark marker of how parched the lake is.

Warm Springs Dam, which created Lake Sonoma in 1984, was built to control flooding in Dry Creek Valley. Today, it provides water to 600,000 residents of Sonoma and Marin County and is the largest recreational lake in the North Bay.

However, Lake Sonoma is currently only at 58% of its total capacity, the lowest April water level ever recorded.

In 2021, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, although Sonoma County had below average rainfall and many called it the driest year on record, Lake Sonoma still sat at 62% capacity.

“This time of year, we’re [usually] seeing Lake Sonoma anywhere [around] 80 plus percent,” said Brad Sherwood, assistant general manager of Sonoma Water.

“Because of winter storms, it’s pretty full by this time of year,” Sherwood explained.

Although storms in December 2021 swelled water supplies, Sonoma County then experienced one of the hottest and driest Januarys on record. This, coupled with little rain in February and March, greatly reduced the water supply of Lake Sonoma.

The problems didn’t start this year, however. The past dry years are still affecting Lake Sonoma and Sonoma’s water supply at large.

“When we’re looking at Lake Sonoma, it is a multi-year water supply,” Santa Rosa Water Department director, Jennifer Burke, said. “We’re really looking at trying to save as much water as possible so that we can get to and through another dry year if that were to come.”

With lower water levels in Lake Sonoma and elsewhere across the Russian River Watershed beginning to strain resources, many municipalities that depend on this water are beginning to reintroduce drought restrictions. Windsor, Rohnert Park and Santa Rosa are requiring residents, businesses and public agencies to reduce water use by 20% from 2020 levels. In Marin, where some towns receive water from Lake Sonoma, the Marin Municipal Water District has mandated a 40% reduction of water use across the county.

North Bay governments aren’t the only ones implementing new constraints. This January, the state of California reintroduced water restrictions to ensure that water conservation is maintained as a high priority across the state. While these restrictions are less straightforward than local mandates, they make it clear that the drought is a great concern at the state level as well.

For many water agencies, water is usually pumped out of a reservoir and then passed to a water treatment facility, where it is filtered several times. After that, it is treated with chlorine and other chemicals to ensure it is potable. The water from Lake Sonoma is cleaned with a more natural approach.

“We’re not like your average water agency,” Sherwood said.

Take the Sonoma Water’s water-cleaning process as an example. The agency pumps water from Lake Sonoma to Dry Creek below the reservoir which then flows into the Russian River. From there, the water is filtered through the Russian River’s naturally-occurring sands and gravels, cleansing the water using the ground itself.

After this, the water is treated with chlorine, and the acidity is adjusted to ensure no bacteria or viruses have contaminated it.

Now, the agency is experimenting in order to better survive periods of drought.

“We’re seeing more droughts, more often,” Burke said. “As we continue to look at the modeling and climate change impacts, we are probably going to see more of this increase in frequency.”

This means that residents need to start using water less. These mandatory reductions are created to ensure this occurs. If a household or business were to use too much water to irrigate over a prolonged period of time, government agencies might issue citations or even shut off an offender’s water.

Luckily, according to Sherwood, Sonoma County is well prepared to conserve water, because droughts are so common in the region.

Sonoma County is “using less water than we were 20 years ago… Our community is very conservation minded,” Sherwood said. “But at the same time, you’ve got less water to squeeze out of the sponge, right?”

While residents and businesses across Sonoma should reduce their water consumption, agencies and cities are also looking to new solutions to the growing threat of climate change driven droughts.

One option Santa Rosa is considering is groundwater recharge. This involves studying parts of the city where officials could pump water into the ground for backup storage to use in hotter and drier months.

Sonoma Water is currently doing something similar in the Santa Rosa Plain. After installing a promising groundwater storage project in 2019, Sonoma Water decided to expand the project by storing water from heavy winter storms in the Santa Rosa Plain for use in the summer. This new groundwater system effectively raises the water table, making pumping from a well easier. When fully implemented, it will expand the groundwater system storage capacity. This plan is currently in its second stage, awaiting assessments that will ensure the safety of the project.

The Santa Rosa Plain Project is similar to proposed ideas by the Coho Partnership, spearheaded by Sonoma County resident and watershed expert, Brock Dolman. In addition to benefiting humans, increasing groundwater reserves is critical for fish in North Bay rivers and creeks, since many species, including coho salmon, need groundwater-fed streams in order to thrive.

However, Dolmand said, more of these alternative water source projects are needed in order to better cohabitate with native wildlife.

While these projects have proven effective, government agencies need to invest more heavily in them to meet the challenges of the day, according to Dolmand.

“We have all the solutions we need all laid out and proven—now is the time to push them out towards greater actualization at meaningful scales from ridge to river to reef,” Dolman said.

Another tool Sonoma Water hopes to use in the coming years, provided they receive the necessary grants, is called FIRO, or Forecast Improved Reservoir Operations. Using weather modeling, FIRO helps interpret when is best to pump water out of the reservoir. Effectively this system, based on scientific observations rather than antiquated bureaucratic rules, ensures more water security in a watershed.

Over eight years ago, FIRO was put in place as an experiment in Lake Mendocino (another essential water source for Sonoma County), and, according to Sherwood, the complex tool has “tremendously saved water” in Mendocino in the past two years.

As a result, Sonoma County officials plan to use FIRO in Lake Sonoma in the next two years.

While options are plentiful in regards to water security in Sonoma, it is only an ever increasing issue as the climate crisis grips the North Bay and the rest of the planet. Looking out to the damp landscape across the reflection of Lake Sonoma, a lake built originally to prevent flooding, it is clear the county is in the midst of a great shift to a drier, hotter, more severe climate.

PG&E Settles Wildfire Cases With $55 Million Deal

Will Carruthers

Apr 20, 2022

PG&E Settles Wildfire Cases With $55 Million Deal

For better or worse, California’s largest utility company is here to stay.

Last year, Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch’s office filed numerous charges against PG&E stemming from damage caused by the October 2019 Kincade Fire, which burned over 77,000 acres over 15 days, triggering the evacuation of over 200,000 North Bay residents. In 2020, CalFire determined that the fire was caused by PG&E’s equipment, however the company was committed to fighting the criminal charges brought by Ravitch’s office.

Then, on Monday, April 11, Ravitch announced she had reached a deal to end her case against PG&E, northern California’s massive, investor-owned utility with a lengthy criminal record.

The utility agreed to a pay out and oversight, with no admission of guilt. In exchange, Ravitch dropped criminal charges against the company. On the same day, prosecutors in five counties affected by the 2021 Dixie Fire also announced similar agreements with PG&E.

Under the agreements, PG&E will pay $35 million to a variety of nonprofits in the fire-impacted communities over the next five years. They will also hire 80-100 additional PG&E workers in Sonoma County and provide funding for the Santa Rosa Junior College’s Fire Technology Program and a new utility vegetation management training program.

Most importantly, according to Ravitch, PG&E will be placed under court oversight and pay for an independent company to monitor the company’s wildfire safety work in Sonoma County. All told, the settlements announced are expected to cost PG&E $55 million over the next five years.

While acknowledging the deal would be criticized as inadequate, Ravitch said it was the “best we could [do] under the circumstances,” with the current laws on the books. Ravitch argued that settling now led to a higher payout from the company and would allow fire victims to close their insurance claims sooner.

In a statement following the announcement of the settlements, PG&E CEO Patti Poppe said “We respect the leadership of the local DAs, welcome the new level of transparency and accountability afforded by these agreements, and look forward to working together for the benefit of the communities we collectively serve.”

All of this seems mighty familiar.

In January, PG&E was allowed to exit federal probation for its role in the 2010 gas line explosion in San Bruno which killed eight people. Judge William Alsup, who supervised the company through its five-year probation period, penned an eight-page statement about the United States Attorney’s decision not to request an extension of the probation period, despite signs that the company would “emerge from probation as a continuing menace to California.”

“While on probation, PG&E has set at least 31 wildfires, burned nearly one and one-half million acres, burned 23,956 structures, and killed 113 Californians,” Alsup wrote.

In March, the California State Auditor released a report finding that the state’s oversight of utilities’ wildfire safety work has been severely lacking. The report found that utilities are not doing fire safety work fast enough in high-risk areas and the California Public Utilities Commision, which regulates PG&E, “has not used its authority to penalize utilities when its audits uncover violations” in utilities’ wildfire mitigation work.

With so much public animosity towards PG&E and evidence that state regulators aren’t doing enough to keep the company in check, Ravitch did not have an enviable job.

In an effort to explain her decision making, she compared her settlement to previous wildfire cases involving PG&E and called out the decisions of other Californian politicians.

At one point, Ravitch compared her decision to reach a financial settlement with the outcome of the criminal case in Butte County following the November 2018 Camp Fire. In that case, PG&E pled guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and paid a $3.5 million fine.

“Is [the settlement] perfect? Absolutely not. But I was not going to end up like [District Attorney] Mike Ramsey up in Butte County listening to the CEO admit responsibility for 84 deaths and then simply paying a fine and walking away. That was not justice in my opinion,” Ravitch said.

Still, the latest $55 million settlement is a small cost for PG&E. In fiscal year 2021, PG&E reported annual revenues of nearly $21 billion. Patricia Poppe, the company’s fifth CEO in five years, was paid $51.2 million in 2021, mostly in stock options.

And, Ravitch’s decision to drop charges before a full trial means that some evidence about the PG&E’s role in starting the fire may never become public.

During the press conference, Ravitch, who is retiring after her current term, also critiqued other public officials, including Governor Gavin Newsom, the state legislature, and state Attorney General Rob Bonta.

“I’m just a prosecutor in Sonoma County. I mean, if I had a magic wand and I could wave it, maybe PG&E wouldn’t exist anymore. But Governor Newsom has decided that PG&E is going to continue. So we’re going to continue to deal with PG&E in our community and this is the best way we could find to deal with PG&E and whatever impact their actions will have on us going forward,” Ravitch said, apparently referring to the Newsom’s decision not to take the company public in 2019 while it’s stock price plummeted.

Next on the docket was the state legislature. Ravitch suggested that, if lawmakers strengthened the penalties for utilities failing to complete required work, local prosecutors could more effectively hold the company accountable with larger fines or place PG&E under probation without the company’s agreement, an option that Ravitch says is not currently possible.

Ravitch also called out the top prosecutor in the state, Attorney General Rob Bonta. Bonta’s office, Ravitch said, had not offered any assistance to the local prosecutors facing off against PG&E. Why Bonta’s office did not help isn’t clear, however, it seems that Ravitch never actually reached out and directly asked for help. Instead, she was expecting Bonta to proactively offer assistance.

“In the past, if the attorney general has an interest in a case, the attorney general will step in and take it over and I think it’s fair to say that didn’t happen here. And it should (have) in my opinion,” Ravitch said at the April 11 press conference. When asked about this, a spokesperson for Bonta told a Marketplace reporter that Ravitch never specifically requested assistance.

No matter who is ultimately to blame—Spoiler: It’s a systemic issue—the latest settlement won’t solve all of PG&E’s problems overnight.

In his January letter, Judge Alsup estimated that it will take PG&E at least another seven years to adequately clean up all of the hazardous trees and vegetation in its coverage area, after neglecting to complete the legally-required work for decades.